IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES LAUNCHES GROUNDBREAKING HIGH-DEFINITION VIDEO DECODER TECHNOLOGY

LAS VEGAS, NV, Jan. 4, 2006: Imagination Technologies, a leader in system-on-chip intellectual property (SoC IP), is presenting its HD-video decoder core and a full range of digital video image enhancement technologies at CES 2006. These technologies bring high-image quality and the widest range of video standards to cost-effective consumer products and are going to be the battle ground for impressing customers with the next wave of HD screens.

Imagination Technologies key HD IP core, PowerVR MSVDX, is a multi-standard high definition video decoder core enabling HD-DVD / Blu-ray decode and HD-Broadcast reception with maximised video-quality.

Says Peter McGuinness, Imagination Technologies Business Development Director (USA): "The typical approach to multi-standard video decoders is heavy on redundancy - a separate core is used for each standard. With PowerVR MSVDX from Imagination Technologies a stream decoder identifies the video standard on input and reconfigures the core accordingly. This more flexible and programmable solution has huge benefits in reducing silicon area and power consumption while providing image quality that beats traditional solutions."

PowerVR MSVDX is a high specification solution that can handle even multiple HD streams on a single core, depending on clock speed.

PowerVR MSVDX supports up to 1080i/1080p and 2048x1024 resolutions and may be configured to support either single streams or up to four multiple streams. The decoder supports the wide range of decode standards including: H.264 (to High Profile), WMV9 (to Main profile), VC-1 (to Advanced profile), MPEG-2 (Main profile), MPEG-4 (to Advanced simple profile), DivX (Certified), and JPEG. MSVDX can be configured with any subset of these standards, enabling effective management of codec royalty costs.

Continues McGuinness: "PowerVR MSVDX goes from video stream reception, through decode, to produce the final picture without the requirement for any processing workload on the host processor other than frame buffer management and basic housekeeping. With the broadest range of supported standards, a small silicon area and comprehensive supporting IP for image enhancement or HDTV baseband MSVDX is the prime choice for HDTV silicon devices."

PowerVR HDTV Image Technologies

Imagination Technologies provides a comprehensive range of HDTV image technologies. Its Display IP includes scalable display pipelines supporting PIP, overlay, advanced de-interlacing and image enhancement enabled by IP including the PowerVR TVE digital TV encoder, the PowerVR PDP pixel display pipeline family and the PowerVR IEP Image Enhancement Processor. PowerVR MSVDX can be combined with Imagination Technologies' encode IP to create a highly integrated and effective HD-codec solution.

PowerVR MSVDX is also suitable for handheld video devices, such as personal media players, where its advanced block and register level clock gating implementation and small silicon area ensure low power consumption. The design has been optimised to further reduce power by enhancing the ratio of the design that can benefit from register level clock gating.

Advanced error recovery is enabled with logic to increase resilience to errors on reception of a corrupted bit-stream. An extremely area-efficient micro-controller within the stream manager enables high-level error recovery while low level activity monitors quickly detect and lock up error conditions.

The PowerVR MSVDX design is available as a soft IP macro coded in VHDL with full documentation, Synopsys Design Compiler scripts and VHDL simulation test benches. The core is synthesizable at a minimum of 150MHz in 130nm process.

'World standard' Digital TV

Imagination Technologies can provide end-to-end HDTV IP. The comprehensive TV platform from Imagination Technologies enables extremely rapid time-to-market for multi-standard SoCs targeting HD and flatpanel TVs.

Imagination Technologies' Universal Communications Coprocessor (UCC), a Software Defined Radio (SDR) platform, which is dominant in digital radio implementations, makes a single television capable of receiving terrestrial, cable and even WLAN transmissions cost effective for television set manufacturers.

The META multi-threaded core enables an efficient system solution covering all the embedded processing requirements in a digital TV application. This includes the audio processing via the high performance DSP capability of META. The core also enables the TV's general-purpose functions, such as, user interface, protocol stack and operating system.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc - a leader in SoC IP - develops, licenses and supplies market-leading graphics, video and display cores, real-time multi-threaded DSP/RISC processors and communication and broadcast technologies for the mobile, consumer, automotive and PC markets. It supplies licensable IP (Intellectual Property) supported by advanced development tools to leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies worldwide. Imagination Technologies Group plc has its corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom and is publicly traded on the London Stock Exchange (FTSE:IMG). See: www.imgtec.com.

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