C-Cube Microsystems Inc, San Jose, has unveiled what it claims to be the first single-chip image compression processor and says it enables desktop computers, communication equipment and consumer electronics products to exploit the potential of multimedia applications. The C-Cube CL550 is also claimed to be the first processor to implement the proposed JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group standard for image compression, as defined by CCITT/ISO. The CL550 compresses still images or motion video by a factor of 20 without visible degradation in quality and compression levels as high as 200-to-1 are possible, vastly reducing the memory needed to store images. It can compress and decompress a standard-size colour photograph in less than a second and motion video in real-time at 30 frames a second. Two versions will be offered, the 10MHz CL550-10 for still image compression and the 27MHz CL550-27 for motion video compression. C-Cube has filed broad patents covering the algorithms and architectures. The CL550 provides an on-chip video interface, including direct interfacing to an image strip buffer, on-chip support for RGB, CMYK or YUV input and output with direct handling of 4:1:1, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 video formats. The CL550 is fabricated in 1.2 micron CMOS and draws under 1.5W at 27MHz; it costs $155 for 10,000-up while the 10MHz version is $95 for 10,000-up; they sample in June with volume September.
