Lambda Systems licenses Amphion Motion-JPEG IP for professional digital video broadcast application

Japanese TV broadcast equipment maker selects digital video core solution from Amphion for gate-array ASIC based image processing studio system

San Jose, California & Belfast, N. Ireland (Dec 20, 2002) - Amphion Semiconductor, Inc., the leading provider of semiconductor intellectual-property (IP) for digital video and broadband wireless system-on-a-chip (SoC) design, today announced that Lambda Systems Inc. (Tokyo, Japan), a niche manufacturer of broadcast and professional studio equipment for television production, has utilized the company's Motion-JPEG image compression technology in a high performance color video graphics processing system for HDTV applications.

Licensed for use in ASIC designs developed by I.C. Corporation, the microelectronics design division of Lambda Systems, the Amphion CS6150 Motion JPEG Decoder core has been fabricated in 350nm gate-array devices from NEC Electronics. Operating at just 40 MHz, the Motion JPEG chip performs real-time decompression of JPEG-encoded frame data in 64 msec, producing full color 1920 x 1080 sized video images in RGB raster scan format. HDTV rates are attained using two devices in tandem. Lambda Systems has subsequently incorporated these Motion JPEG ASIC devices in a high performance embedded system for color video graphics processing: the GRID-MF32HDX, a high-end caption generation system, was launched in November at Japan's 38th International Broadcast Equipment Exhibition (IBEE 2002).

"Thanks to the star quality of Amphion's intellectual property and technical support, the development of the JPEG sea-of-gates ASIC design – the key semiconductor element of the GRID-MF32HDX product – was completed in a surprisingly short time," said Toru Takahashi, design manager at I.C. Corporation. "Amphion's bit-accurate C-model of the JPEG core allowed the in-system performance of the gate array to be precisely determined in advance, and the silicon-proven status of this virtual component eliminated the need to spend valuable simulation time de-bugging this aspect of the design."

Driven by design excellence
Amphion's JPEG image compression technology has been previously licensed to a range of international customers for an array of high-resolution imaging and image processing applications; Amphion was first to market with JPEG cores for FPGA/PLD. The company recently strengthened its leadership in digital video core solutions with product introductions for JPEG2000 Encode, Codec and Wavelet Transform.

"Amphion provides a spectrum of silicon-proven IP for consumer digital video and the professional broadcast chain, from color space converters to multi-stream MPEG-2 decoders. The momentum of multiple design wins for JPEG sockets is now transferring into strong customer interest in our JPEG2000 product line," commented JG Doherty, president and CEO of Amphion. "Time and again the company has demonstrated that its commitment to design excellence and support enables customers like Lambda Systems to reduce engineering costs, extend system functionality, accelerate time-to-market, and improve end-product performance."

Available in targeted-netlist formats for rapid integration in SoC/ASIC technologies and low-cost programmable logic devices (eg, Altera Cyclone or Xilinx Spartan-IIE) the Amphion product line-up for hardware-based Motion JPEG includes the CS6100 Decoder, CS6150 Encoder, CS6190 Codec and Discrete Cosine Transform functions.

About Lambda Systems Inc.
Lambda Systems Inc. is a leading manufacturer of professional digital video equipment for use in television broadcast, studio and post-production. Dedicated to setting standards for performance, flexibility, reliability and user confidence, the company's product line-up includes systems for standard definition NTSC through to HDTV. For more information, visit www.lambda.co.jp

About Amphion
Amphion is the leading supplier of application-specific cores for System-on-a-Chip (SoC) integrated circuit designs for digital video and broadband wireless. 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 to directly map digital signal processing functions and algorithms into hardware, Amphion develops and licenses semiconductor intellectual-property (SIP) cores that are close to optimal in terms of power, cycles, and area – computationally up to several orders of magnitude more efficient than equivalent functions implemented on a programmable processor. Amphion cores operate standalone, or by direct interface to industry-standard RISC and DSP processors, and can be easily migrated through successive 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 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.