CAST Expands Image Compression Line with New JPEG-LS Encoder Core

DATE Conference, Nice, France, April 16, 2007 — Semiconductor intellectual property (IP) provider CAST, Inc. today announced that it has expanded its family of image compression IP products with a new lossless compression core using the JPEG-LS standard.

The company believes that this is the only commercially-available JPEG-LS IP core. This addition makes CAST’s family of JPEG cores the most complete from any single vendor, featuring a mix of encoders, decoders, and codecs for the JPEG, lossless JPEG, JPEG-LS, and JPEG 2000 standards.

The JPEG cores are developed by CAST partner Alma Technologies, S.A. in Athens, Greece (www.alma-tech.com). Most have been silicon-proven with multiple customers, in applications ranging from JPEG for ultrasound topographers and cellular phone chipsets to JPEG2000 for satellites and LJPEG in high-end digital SLR cameras.

The new JPEGLS-E Encoder Core implements the ISO/IEC 14495-1 JPEG-LS standard. This low-complexity algorithm is designed to efficiently compress continuous tone color and grayscale images (i.e., photos) with lossless and near-lossless levels of quality. The core itself offers a compact physical size and unusually-high processing rate—up to 161 MSamples/second on an FPGA, enabling HDTV processing—and has automatic and programmable features that simplify system integration.

Compared with lossless JPEG, the JPEG-LS core offers a higher compression level (smaller files) with a similar physical size. Compared with JPEG 2000’s lossless mode, it provides equivalent or greater compression with much smaller hardware.

The new core is available immediately, in HDL source code for ASICs or optimized netlists for structured ASICs and FPGAs. See www.cast-inc.com/jpegs for technical details, plus JPEG family datasheets, output image comparisons, and tips for choosing the best compression core for any particular application.

About CAST, Inc.

CAST provides over 100 popular and standards-based IP cores for ASICs and FPGAs. Privately owned and operating since 1993, CAST has established a reputation for high-quality IP products, simple licensing, and responsive technical support. The company is headquartered near New York City, partners with IP developers around the world, and works with select sales consultants and distributors throughout Europe and Asia. See www.cast-inc.com for more information.