2008-03-26 20:10:00 - ACE supports all of the most popular video compression algorithms (including MPEG-2, AVC/H.264, VC-1, MJPEG, etc.) and can be dimensioned to satisfy the exact requirements of a given application, from QVGA to full 1920x1080 HD and beyond. ACE is suitable for implementation in a wide range of products, including Blu-Ray recorders, HD camcorders, HD mobile applications, home gateways and wireless HDMI adapters.

High Wycombe – 4th March 2008 – Aspex SemiconductorTM, a UK-based fabless semiconductor company providing System-on-Chip HD video transcoding solutions for high volume consumer electronics applications, today announced the availability of its “Aspex Compression Engine” (ACE).

ACE is a software programmable and highly scalable HD video transcoder engine based around Aspex's 8th generation ASProCore, an architecture optimised for HD video compression.

The engine takes advantage of the expertise Aspex has acquired in the professional markets, to bring the highest level of quality and performance to both home and mobile consumer devices.

The engine's software programmability allows a single architecture to support all of the most popular video compression algorithms (including MPEG-2, AVC/H.264, VC-1, MJPEG, etc.), providing an enormous amount of flexibility. ACE scalability also means that the engine can be dimensioned to satisfy the exact requirements of a given application, from QVGA to full 1920x1080 HD and beyond, minimising both price and power consumption and making it suitable for implementation in a wide range of products, including Blu-Ray recorders, HD camcorders, HD mobile applications, home gateways and wireless HDMI adapters, without the need for software rewrites.

“In today's world, the multimedia experience is becoming ubiquitous and the demand for multimedia content to be accessible any-time and anywhere will only increase”, said Fabio Murra, Product Marketing Manager at Aspex Semiconductor. “This means that the devices themselves need to transcode HD content to different formats, for example ‘sideloading’ from an advanced set-top box to an iPod or uploading from an HDCAM to the Internet. ACE is the engine that allows them to do this, at low power and with an ultra-small silicon footprint.”

“Building on our 20-year expertise in SIMD architectures we optimised Aspex’s ASProCore specifically for video processing, developing an architecture with die size and power consumption comparable to those of an ASIC. And the added bonus of full linear scalability and software programmability!”, added Fabio Murra. “This greatly reduces the intrinsic complexity associated with developing devices that today have to operate in all these different scenarios, effectively decreasing risk and time-to-market for a given product”.

ACE IP is available as a fully featured RTL block, with verification test benches, synthesis scripts, a behavioural simulator and reference 'C' software libraries and API.

To find out more about ACE, please visit www.aspex-semi.com/ace or contact Aspex at enquiries@aspex-semi.com