Emblaze and OmniVision Technologies Sign Agreement

OmniVision Technologies (www.ovt.com) and Emblaze Systems ( www.emblaze.com), through its subsidiary EmblazeResearch, have announced a long-term strategic agreement that has the objective of providing an integrated two chip commercial CMOS camera and MPEG-4 standard codec (encoder/decoder) reference design for mobile handsets.

The companies state that the agreement provides the opportunity for both companies to aid in the development of what will be one of the first two-way, real-time video cell phones. The purpose of this development agreement is to provide OEMs of mobile handset manufacturers with an integrated, standard-compliant video capture, encoding and playback solution.

The reference design will combine the Emblaze Research A3 MPEG-4 standard codec chip and OmniVision's OV66XX and OV76XX CMOS camera and includes software to enable a complete camera and MPEG-4 encoder/decoder subsystem.

The two companies believe that the first reference design will be available for OEMs at the end of Q2 2001. Under the agreement, both companies will offer the reference design and co-market and support, any OEM that integrates the reference design into its product offerings. This cooperation will provide OEMs with pre-integrated software and hardware solution for a MPEG-4 encoding/decoding solution for mobile handsets.

According to Shaw Hong, CEO of OmniVision Technologies, mobile phone manufacturers are looking for a total integrated solution for video applications. "We believe that the combination of Emblaze's MPEG-4 standard codec chip and OmniVision's highly integrated CMOS image sensor into a complete reference design including software, will be attractive to manufacturers who would like to implement designs for all kinds of video applications,'' Hong added.