Altera, ATEME to Demonstrate Industry's First FPGA-Based H.264/AVC Encoder at NAB2005

Stratix II FPGAs Meet Stringent H.264 Video Encoding Requirements Enabling Flexible, High Performance ATEME Broadcast Solution

NAB2005, Las Vegas, April 11, 2005 — Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) and ATEME will demonstrate the industry’s first FPGA-based H.264/AVC real-time video encoder at NAB2005, the annual National Association of Broadcasters Conference. Utilizing Altera’s Stratix®II FPGAs, the ATEME solution enables broadcast video quality and is available as intellectual property (IP) using VHDL, which allows designers to easily customize their video systems.

“Following market adoption of our AVC software libraries, we are proud to offer the same quality IP in real time, as VHDL-IP, with a proven supplier of comprehensive broadcast solutions such as Altera,” said ATEME product manager Francois-Xavier Parisot. “Utilizing the digital signal processing block performance and on-chip memory of Altera’s Stratix II FPGAs for our encoder architecture provides great overall device efficiency. Also, aligning with Altera gives us access to HardCopy®II structured ASICs, which provides us with an attractive, low-risk path to cost-reducing our solution.”

H.264 encoding requirements mandate extreme computational performance and memory bandwidth together with total flexibility, all of which are inherent in Altera’s high-performance Stratix II FPGAs. With its performance, quality, and time-to-market benefits, ATEME expects its H.264/AVC video encoder to attract rapid adoption in the broadcast, broadband, and professional A/V industry segments.

“The feature-rich architecture of our Stratix II FPGAs provides excellent processing performance for leading-edge broadcast video solutions such as ATEME’s H.264/AVC video encoder,” said Todd Scott, senior director of Altera’s digital consumer and broadcast business unit. “This unique architecture not only gives system designers flexibility, but also the smooth process integration and design resources unavailable in any other broadcast video processor.”

The ATEME H.264/AVC encoder, which is fully compliant with ISO/IEC 14496-10, is available now in a multi-chip configuration using multiple Stratix II FPGAs. The single-chip Stratix II version, available soon, will improve system integration by requiring less interconnection.

The H.264/AVC encoder can be viewed at Altera booth C11212, or ATEME booth SL3922, with a standard definition/high definition (SD/HD) PCI reference design. To learn more about Altera’s broadcast solutions at NAB2005, visit www.altera.com/broadcastsolutions.

About ATEME

ATEME, headquartered in France (www.ateme.com), is a world-leading provider of hardware and software advanced video and audio coding technologies on FPGAs, DSP, and x86. ATEME delivers custom services on top of its algorithms and reference designs. Since 2002, ATEME has focused on applicative market-oriented reference designs that target broadcast, video-security, and consumer electronics domains. The result for OEMs is a faster product design, shorter time-to-market, and overall cost reduction, coupled with leading, best-in-class video quality. ATEME operates worldwide through its distribution network in Europe, Asia, and North America.

About Altera

Altera Corporation (NASDAQ: ALTR) is the world’s pioneer in system-on-a-programmable-chip (SOPC) solutions. Combining programmable logic technology with software tools, intellectual property, and technical services, Altera provides high-value programmable solutions to approximately 14,000 customers worldwide. More information is available at www.altera.com.

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