Allegro introduces world's first H.264/MPEG-4 AVC High-Profile/High-Definition Hardware Video Encoding IP

Grenoble, France -- May 6, 2008 -- Allegro announces the immediate availability of its high-profile, high-definition H.264/MPEG-4 AVC hardware video encoding IP (RTL). Allegro’s H.264 IP core is a real-time hardware encoder targeting mobile phones, camcorders, set-top boxes, webcams and video surveillance applications. The IP core uses Allegro’s H.264 compression algorithms originally designed for high quality broadcast applications. Allegro’s IP core can process images up to high-definition resolutions.

Allegro’s H.264 IP encoder has been fully tested using Allegro’s “industry standard” certification streams. Allegro’s H.264 encoding technology has already been used successfully in a 65nm System-on-Chip (SoC) by one of the world's top5 IC vendors.

The high-profile design includes the most advanced H.264 coding tools. Using efficient compression tools like cabac entropy coding, dynamic transforms, enhanced intra prediction and scaling lists, Allegro’s H.264 encoding IP brings significant bit rates savings compared to existing solutions.

Allegro’s H.264 IP encoder is designed for fast and easy integration in a wide range of SoCs. The H.264 IP core is an independent entity, requiring minimum support from the SoC embedded CPU. The motion estimation algorithms have been optimized to fit the memory bandwidth and latency requirements of consumer SoCs. Thanks to the product's hardware architecture, the H.264 coding IPs minimize both gate counts and power consumption.

Allegro’s H.264 encoding IPs are also available for H.264 baseline and main profiles in resolutions ranging from CIF to HD.

About Allegro

Allegro is a privately held company providing expertise in digital video processing and state-of-the-art H.264/AVC solutions. It delivers H.264/AVC compliance testing suites and audio/video encoders and transcoders for mobile and web TV, IPTV, T-DMB and Visual Radio. Allegro customers include silicon vendors, set-top box, mobile phone, TV-set and DVD player manufacturers and satellite, cable and telco operators. For more information, visit www.allegrodvt.com.