GEO and ARM extend collaboration to ARM PoweredTM EmblazeTM A3 videophone technology
July 23, 2000 - GEO today announced that it has signed an agreement with ARM, the industry's leading provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC processor solutions, to extend the companies' collaboration to develop an embedded videophone platform. This agreement follows the previous deal signed between the companies for the development of the EmblazeTM A2 decoder chip combined with ARM® core-optimised software.
Under the terms of the agreement ARM and GEO will co-develop ARM PoweredTM EmblazeTM A3 video encoder and speech CODECs. GEO have used their expertise of video transmission over cellular networks to develop the Emblaze A3 videophone platform and ARM will use their unrivalled knowledge of the ARM core to optimise GEO's software for minimum memory and power consumption. Both companies will actively co-market the A3 solution and share future revenues derived from this cooperation.
GEO's ARM core-optimized A3 technology will enable two-way video communication encoding and decoding of video, voice and high-quality music, and will be used in their A3 videophone ASIC, an ARM920™ core-based platform, and as a licensable videophone software solution for use on any ARM Powered platform.
The Geo solution is the industry's first embedded mobile video architecture and includes all MPEG-4 compliant encode and decode of video, music and voice performed on an ARM processor, with no DSP or other hardware acceleration. The new platform offers significant power consumption and system cost benefits, due to the combination of Geo's systems knowledge and ARM's expertise in software optimization for its 16/32-bit architecture.
"We have been working with Geo on the development of their ARM Powered solution," said Dave Walsh, Software Systems business unit manager at ARM. "This collaboration will deliver real time-to-market advantages to customers implementing an embedded videophone platform on ARM cores. It will allow them to exploit the system cost, power consumption and flexibility benefits of a highly-optimized, software-only solution."
Sharon Carmel, Co-founder and CTO at GEO said: "We are very pleased to extend our relationship with ARM to the new A3 technology. ARM is one of the leaders in providing solutions for embedded applications. This relationship will promote both companies to sustained leadership positions in the mobile communication industry".
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