Amphion JPEG accelerator cores smash megapixel performance barrier for personal imaging and consumer video

Belfast, N. Ireland & San Jose, California (Dec 10, 2001) - Amphion Semiconductor Ltd., the leading provider of semiconductor intellectual-property for multimedia, data security, wireless and broadband communications, today announces the immediate availability of its plug-and-play Motion JPEG accelerator IP cores - Codec, Encoder, and Decoder - for integration in 130nm ASIC process technologies, and the latest generation of programmable logic devices from Altera Corp. (APEX? II family) and Xilinx, Inc. (Virtex?-II series). Amphion CS6100 series Motion-JPEG compression products are fully compliant with Baseline JPEG image compression standards as defined in ISO/IEC 10918-1/2, and offer faster-than-real-time image processing that propels JPEG well beyond megapixel digital still camera applications.

Silicon-proven JPEG cores for System-on-a-Chip
"The migration of these cores to 130nm silicon gains the image processing designer a stunning 6-megapixel image compression at 30 frames per second," said J.G. Doherty, Amphion's CEO. "In fact, Amphion's JPEG compression quality is comparable to 'I-frame only' MPEG-2 - that's MPEG-2 video without the motion compensation. That kind of real-time performance opens up a whole new range of possibilities for JPEG systems-on-chip, such as image processing of HDTV-sized color pictures at 60 frames per second." Amphion JPEG cores can be directly integrated into a variety of full motion and still image processing applications to enable an exciting array of digital video and multimedia applications:

§ Hard-disk drive Digital Video Recording/Editing
§ VGA-quality PC webcams
§ Video-conferencing
§ Digital CCTV for remote/security surveillance
§ Video-enabled Mobile Phone, Wireless PDA
§ Networked Video/Image distribution, archiving
§ Megapixel Digital Still Cameras

"Amphion has pioneered application-specific cores for baseline JPEG image compression. We've won numerous JPEG sockets over the years and have seen Amphion JPEG proven successfully in silicon many times," Doherty added.

1000x better than RISC/DSP software solutions
Amphion CS6100 series Motion JPEG cores process streaming frame-based images at rates up to 2.2 Gigabits per second (285 MegaSamples/sec x 8 bits per Sample) in devices using TSMC's 130nm (0.13-micron) standard cell process. The cores offer combined speed-power-area performance that is three orders of magnitude (1000x) better than RISC/DSP processor based software solutions and enables the compression-decompression of full color images at 60 frames per second with compressed image quality comparable to 'I-frame' only MPEG-2. For consumer digital still camera applications, the Amphion CS6100 Encoder cores can compress full-color 4-megapixel images in 21 milliseconds at compression ratios up to 25:1 (i.e. 4 percent of the original picture file size) with imperceptible distortion to the viewer.

Amphion CS6100 series Motion JPEG products are available now as off-the-shelf application-specific cores in targeted-netlist formats for 180nm, 150nm and 130nm ASIC processes, as well as the latest APEX? II PLDs from Altera, and Virtex?-II FPGAs from Xilinx:

Amphion CS6100 M-JPEG Encoder:
TSMC 130nm: 285 MegaSamples/sec, 285 MHz, 70K gates
Altera APEX II EP2A70-7: 59.40 MHz, 8857 LE, 32256 ESB
Xilinx Virtex-II XC2V1000-5: 71.6 MHz, 3413 SLICES, 5 BRAM, 9 MULTS

Amphion CS6150 M-JPEG Decoder:
TSMC 130nm: 185 MegaSamples/sec, 185 MHz, 60K gates
Altera APEX II EP2A15-7: 38.7MHz, 8224 LE, 148736 ESB
Xilinx Virtex-II XC2V1000-5: 41.5 MHz, 3422 SLICES, 4 BRAM, 9 MULTS

Amphion CS6190 M-JPEG Codec:
TSMC 130nm: 170 MegaSamples/sec, 170 MHz, 97K gates
Altera APEX II: key metrics available on request
Xilinx Virtex-II XC2V1000-5: 40.1 MHz, 5800 SLICES, 5 BRAM, 9 MULTS

"With the latest programmable logic devices, for example Xilinx Virtex-II series, we achieve encoding performance of 0.57 Gigabits per second. This enables standard-definition video processing at NTSC or PAL rates in an FPGA," said Dr. Jill Hunter, Senior Designer at Amphion, and a member of the Joint Photographic Experts Group. "The encode and decode performance achievable makes these cores ideal for the most demanding frame-based image compression applications - without the need for host processor intervention."

Amphion CS6100 Motion JPEG cores belong to an extensive range of standard products for video and imaging which also includes a Simple Profile MPEG-4 Video Decoder, a High-Definition MPEG-2 Video Decoder for ASIC, an MP@ML MPEG-2 Video Decoder for FPGA, and a Discrete Wavelet Transform core for JPEG2000 applications. Technical datasheets for Amphion products are available at http://www.amphion.com

About Amphion
Amphion is the leading supplier of application-specific cores for IP-based System-on-a-Chip (SoC) integrated circuit designs for multimedia, data security, wireless and broadband communications. Amphion delivers high-performance solutions for video and image compression, advanced encryption, and speech and channel coding with a comprehensive range of silicon-optimized products. Using proprietary techniques for the direct-mapping of processing functions and algorithms into hardware, Amphion develops and licenses semiconductor intellectual-property (SIP) cores that are close to optimal in terms of performance and power dissipation - typically 1000x better than competing solutions. Amphion cores operate either standalone, or interface directly to industry-standard RISC and DSP processors, and can be easily migrated through different generations of fabrication technology, thus preserving engineering investments in SoC design. Amphion is a privately-held company with corporate headquarters and engineering in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK and worldwide sales and marketing headquarters in San Jose, California, USA. Amphion was formerly known as Integrated Silicon Systems Ltd, or ISS. For more information, visit http://www.amphion.com

Notes to Editors
Amphion, The Amphion logo, and "Virtual Components for the Converging World" are trademarks of Amphion Semiconductor Ltd. All other brand names or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Press Contacts
David Mann, Amphion
Europe: +44 28 9050 4040
marcom@amphion.com

Ron Sailors, Amphion
North America: (408) 441-1248
marcom@amphion.com