Cradle's CT3616 Powers Matrox's Video Capture/Compression Cards

SUNNYVALE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- November 27, 2006 -- Cradle Technologies, a fabless semiconductor company providing a line of Multi-core DSPs (MDSPs) for video and imaging systems, and Matrox Imaging, a leading designer of PC-based hardware and software for machine vision, image analysis, medical imaging and video surveillance, have announced that Matrox's Morphis QxT, based on Cradle's CT3616 MDSP chip, is now in production.

The Matrox Morphis QxT is a 1/2 length ('short card') PCI Express® video capture/compression card whose 16-channel video input supports simultaneous acquisition, live video streaming of 16 full resolution video channels to the PC, as well as programmable compression from up to 16 independent standard NTSC/PAL video sources, such as CCTV cameras. Live video streaming over PCI Express® allows the PC to display one or all of the inputs without having to decode the compressed video streams, saving significant costs on the host. Cradle's CT3616 MDSP, with downloadable firmware, can perform real-time MPEG-4 encoding of 16 CIF (352 x 240/288) video streams, four full D1 (720 x 480/576) video streams, or any equivalent combination of D1 and CIF channels. The Matrox Morphis QxT also features 32 TTL auxiliary I/Os, 16 audio inputs, and a watchdog timer.

"The Morphis QxT's combination of live video streaming over PCI Express® and MDSP processing will enable a wide range of new applications," said Bruce Schulman, Cradle's Vice President of Applications. "Cradle is providing the CT3616 MDSP technology, enabling the Matrox Morphis QxT to target multi-application, multi-channel video processing systems."

The CT3616, the highest performance member of Cradle's CT3600 MDSP family, runs at 350MHz, supports 16 channels of CIF resolution Simple Profile MPEG-4 encoding, and can do over 90,000 8-bit MMACS per second. The CT3600 family integrates eight general purpose processors (GPPs) along with 16 DSPs, and 18 programmable eight-bit I/O ports, improving processor efficiency for control code, compute-intensive media processing algorithms, and easing interface design in any system. In addition to the multiple DSP and GPP cores, the CT3600 architecture has an intelligent three-tier memory hierarchy that minimizes stalls due to long access times to external memory, a wide and flexible DDR SDRAM interface, a high-performance 64-bit internal global bus, and several dedicated I/O and DRAM DMA engines to meet the high throughput requirements of compute-intensive audio and video-processing applications. The smart I/O subsystem, comprising up to 18 pin-groups of 8 pins each, was customized to provide a high speed raw video interface to an FPGA on the Matrox card.

"Cradle's CT3616 chip, with its high processing performance and unique multi-core programming tools, allowed us to infuse the Morphis QxT with very sophisticated video processing capabilities," said Fabio Perelli, Product Manager at Matrox Imaging. "We found Cradle to be a strong technology partner for developing a product that will give our customers powerful and flexible video capabilities in their end-user systems. We are delighted with the Cradle solution. We anticipated significant challenges implementing our complex system architecture, but their programmable I/O quickly solved the challenges and is now a valuable design feature, allowing us to rapidly modify the interface when necessary. Implementing this flexibility in our current solution solidifies our future product roadmap leveraging future Cradle ICs."

About Cradle Technologies

Cradle is a fabless semiconductor company providing the best price/performance, most flexible, and most scalable DSP solutions for real-time multimedia applications. Cradle's Multi-core DSP architecture innovation delivers high-performance scalable DSP processing with the flexibility, time-to-market, and product differentiation benefits of processor-based programmable platforms. Coupled with a Rapid Development System and suite of application software functions, Cradle provides OEMs with all the building blocks necessary to enable flexible yet high-performance DSP designs. Cradle's corporate headquarters are located in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit www.cradle.com.

About Matrox

Established in 1976, Matrox Imaging is a leading designer of PC-based hardware and software for machine vision, image analysis, medical imaging and video surveillance. Products include frame grabbers, vision processors, imaging platforms, smart cameras, and development software. Headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Matrox is a privately held company with international offices in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany and Hong Kong. For more company information, visit: www.matrox.com/imaging/about/.

Contact Information: Media Contacts: Cain Communications Jim Lipman Tel: (925) 606-1370 Email: Email Contact Cradle Technologies Patrick Soheili Tel: (408) 636-5020 Email: Email Contact