VeriSilicon Launches New Families of Advanced Audio / Video Application Platforms to Accelerate Portable Multimedia Designs

• VZ.Video family incorporating state-of-the-art, low-power video hardware requiring less than 66 MHz for D1 @ 30 fps decode or encode
• VZ.Audio family enabling sub $1 MP3 ICs with the introduction of new products such as ZSP(R) 210 and USB 2.0 OTG

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 29, 2007 -- VeriSilicon Holdings Co., Ltd. (VeriSilicon), a leading world class ASIC design foundry and silicon solutions provider, today announced the release of two new application platform families, VZ.Video and VZ.Audio, to serve the challenging needs of portable multimedia devices. Within the last few years, digital video requirements have quickly grown to support standard television resolutions (D1) and multiple standards at the lowest cost and power consumption. Digital audio products also span a wide range of performance requirements to support latest audio technologies and encode functions. The VZ.Video and VZ.Audio platforms families address these requirements and provide ultra-low-power, feature-rich solutions in the smallest silicon footprint.

VZ.Video provides leading-class video capability for a full range of portable video standards such as:

• MPEG2
• H.263 P3
• MPEG4 Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile
• H.264 Baseline Profile and Main Profile
• VC-1 (WMV9) Simple Profile and Main Profile
• DivX
• MJPEG

SoC designers may select from a number of hardware video bundles to choose the right combination of decoding and encoding standards that meet their requirements. Bundles support complex use cases such as simultaneous, multi- standard decode and encode. By relying on video hardware for data intensive operations, VZ.Video provides best-in-class power efficiency requiring only 66 MHz system clock and less than 1 MIPS CPU loading to encode or decode at D1 resolution, 30fps, 1.5Mbps. VZ.Video also incorporates a number of software programmable features to provide a robust solution in terms of error resiliency and error concealment. Customers have the flexibility to select either CPU based audio for lowest system footprint or the VZ.Audio platform to implement complex audio use cases at the lowest power consumption.

The VZ.Audio family is based on the popular ZSP G1 architecture and features five different DSP core options to give system designers the maximum flexibility in selecting the perfect balance between system performance and cost, depending on their specific audio requirements. The ZSP cores differ in size and performance, ranging from a single-MAC, single-issue to a dual-MAC, quad-issue DSP architecture. For example VZ.Audio-210 includes the new ZSP210 core, with instruction cache and 32-bit address range support for advanced software processing while minimizing on-chip memory cost. Starting at 35,000 gates and 3uW/MHz on a 0.13um process, ZSP has significantly lower power and lower area than alternative processors. All ZSP cores are software compatible, enabling system developers to fully leverage their software investment in future designs.

VZ.Audio is inclusive of audio application software. Customers can select from a wide range of technologies:

MPEG (MP3) Decoder MPEG AAC LC Decoder  MPEG AAC LC Encoder  High Efficiency (aacPlus) Decoder WMA Decoder DRM10 Ogg Vorbis Decoder

SBC Decoder SBC Encoder FLAC Decoder GSM AMR Decoder GSM AMR WB Decoder QSound MicroQ(TM)

As part of the platforms offering, Customers may also incorporate components of the V.Blox IP library for a complete, end-to-end SoC solution. V.Blox provides a full range of digital and analog blocks including: audio DAC/CODEC, DC-DC converter, I2C, PLL, LCD Driver, USB 2.0 OTG FS controller and PHY. VeriSilicon Solution Partner SoC IPs -- such as the ARM7TDMI®, ARM922T(TM), and ARM926EJ-S(TM) processors from ARM and the embedded 1T SRAM technology from Mosys -- are also available as a part of the VZ.Video and VZ.Audio platforms.

"VZ.Video and VZ.Audio represent significant product introductions for VeriSilicon and our commitment towards providing total platform solutions for our focused end market", said Federico Arcelli, Corporate VP of Worldwide Sales & Marketing. "Both platforms feature unrivalled audio / video technologies that dramatically reduce project development time to get to market quicker with superior products in terms of features and performance. When combined with our turnkey-ASIC capabilities, we are enabling a unique end-to-end SoC value proposition to our Customers."

Availability

VZ.Video and VZ.Audio are immediately available either as part of VeriSilicon ASIC Turnkey offering or as licensable SoC platforms. System designers may also license individual components or customized bundled solutions to substantially lower development and total upfront costs.

About ZSP®

ZSP is a family of licensable digital signal processing (DSP) cores and solutions from VeriSilicon. With more than 50 customers worldwide, the ZSP processor architecture enables customer innovation as the DSP of choice in many key vertical markets including 3G wireless handsets, multimedia and networked voice applications. The ZSP portfolio offers two generations of architectures, G1 and G2, with software compatible cores delivering performance points that meet the cost, power and efficiency constraints of today's SoC designs. Reference Silicon is also available for VoIP applications. ZSP Solution Partners augment the technology with world-class software tools, EDA modeling support and a large portfolio of application software. ZSP customers include Broadcom, Marvell, Renesas, Yamaha, Huawei, Datang, Murata, AVID and many other world-class companies. More information is available at www.verisilicon.com

About VeriSilicon

VeriSilicon Holdings Co., Ltd ("VeriSilicon") is a fast growing silicon solutions company providing products and services that enable customers to meet their chip design objectives, accelerate development programs and deliver market proven silicon products -- on time and at lower cost. VeriSilicon specializes in providing expert design services, market leading ZSP® licensable cores and platforms, industry standard semiconductor IP and scalable ASIC turnkey services across a broad range of application markets, including multimedia, voice and wireless communications. VeriSilicon has design, operation and sales and support offices in Santa Clara, California, Dallas, Texas, Shanghai and Beijing, China, Taipei, Taiwan, Tokyo, Japan, Nice, France and Seoul, Korea.