Alma Technologies launches its new generation JPEG 2000 Encoder Core

Pikermi, Athens June 11, 2007 − The new generation JPEG2k-E IP core is faster, requires no external processing, adds significant features, and is customizable and highly scalable.

Built on already-proven code, the new generation of the JPEG2k-E Encoder Core is a major advance that improves processing and makes it significantly easier to integrate JPEG 2000 in ASIC or FPGA-based systems. It features:

• Nearly twice the processing speed of the previous version, with some of the fastest processing rates available: over 100 MSamples/sec for FPGAs and over 200 MSamples/sec for ASICs.

• A new rate control capability, by which image quality is maximized while maintaining a constant post-compression bit rate that satisfies a system's transmission and decoding requirements.

• Expanded support for arbitrary large images, now handling frame sizes up to 4096 by 4096 pixels without tiling, ensuring efficient processing of even the largest HDTV images.

• Full hardware handling of both Tier-1 and Tier-2 JPEG 2000 encoding, eliminating the need to do Tier-2 encoding in software running on an additional processor.

This latter feature is most significant, as it means the JPEG2K-E does a more complete job than most similar cores, receiving pixel data and generating an immediately-usable, fully-compliant output stream with no extra processor or programming required. Besides reducing chip area and product cost, this plus other features of the core make the JPEG2K-E one of the easiest available in terms of system integration and software development effort.

First introduced in 2002, the JPEG2k-E IP core is successfully in use by multiple military and aerospace customers for various demanding applications. The JPEG2k-E core provides high-quality compression of still or video images using the JPEG 2000 standard (ISO/IEC 15444-1). This flexible JPEG 2000 standard offers both lossless and lossy compression, and it can achieve superior image quality with higher compression ratios (for smaller file sizes) than the ordinary JPEG standard. Though not yet widely used for web-based images, JPEG 2000 has proven invaluable for certain specialized applications. For example, frame-by-frame Motion JPEG 2000 is seen as the best technology for digital film compression, and has been adopted by the Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) consortium and others.

About Alma Technologies S.A.

Alma Technologies S.A. is a private company based in Athens−Greece, founded in 2001. Alma Technologies specializes in the development of high quality hardware virtual components (Silicon IP Cores) and provides digital VLSI design services. Its fields of expertise include image compression, digital image and video processing, multimedia and cryptography applications. In these fields a broad range of high quality IP Core solutions is offered.