Imagination Technologies Announces Addition of AVS Chinese Video Standard to World-Leading Multi-Standard Video Core Family

Las Vegas -- January 8, 2008 -- Imagination Technologies, a leader in System-on-Chip Intellectual Property (SoC IP), announces the new POWERVR™ VXD380 advanced video decoder with support for all major HD and SD video formats, including the new Chinese AVS standard. VXD380 is the latest member of the growing POWERVR VXD/VXE family of video decoders and encoders.

Says Tony King-Smith, VP marketing, Imagination Technologies: “Our successful VXD family has been selected by a number of key partners and we know that they consider it the most power efficient, size efficient, high-performance solution available. With the addition of AVS support we have a comprehensive family of video decode technologies for all the key world markets.”

AVS is China’s independent video standard, and claims more than twice the coding efficiency of MPEG-2. AVS, which has a lower licensing cost and simpler licensing model than some other video standards, is expected to be widely used in the Chinese market.

Imagination’s POWERVR VXD380 multi-standard, HD video decode core is capable of efficiently decoding AVS as well as all the leading video standards such as H.264, VC-1 (WMV 9), DivX, MPEG-4, H.263, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, JPEG – while using the smallest silicon area and lowest power consumption.

POWERVR VXD380 is a highly optimised architecture which features a stream processor that analyses the incoming video bit-stream on a frame by frame basis, and reconfigures the highly configurable low-level hardware modules in the IP core accordingly. This multi-mode hardware approach delivers dramatic reductions in silicon area and power consumption for a configurable solution, as a large proportion of the processing hardware required is based on similar building blocks for the many video standards supported by the core.

As an example, a 90nm 133MHz implementation of the core delivers power consumption of around 45mW for decoding HD video streams using H.264 High Profile, and as little as 30mW for MPEG-2 Main Profile.

POWERVR VXD380 supports all HD and SD resolutions and may be configured to support multiple stream decode allowing rich picture-in-picture options such as next station preview, Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) grids of live videos, or dynamic video browsing for media player applications.

POWERVR video cores are targeted at a wide range of applications including HDTV, IDTV, STB and PMP as well as mobile devices, and are supported by an extensive set of hardware drivers and application middleware.

POWERVR VXD380 will be available for delivery to licensing partners from Q2 2008.

About Imagination Technologies

Imagination Technologies Group plc (FTSE:IMG) – a leader in semiconductor System-on-Chip Intellectual Property (SoC IP) – creates and licenses market-leading embedded graphics, video and display accelerators, multi-threaded processors and multi-standard receiver technologies. These IP solutions are complemented by dynamic and extensive developer and middleware ecosystems. Target markets include digital radio and audio, mobile phone multimedia, personal media players (PMP), in-car navigation & driver information, personal navigation devices (PND), Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) and Mobile Internet Device (MID), digital TV & set-top box, and mobile TV. Its licensees include leading semiconductor and consumer electronics companies, as well as innovative leading edge start-up and fabless semiconductor companies. Imagination has corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom, with sales and R&D offices worldwide. See www.imgtec.com.