January 30, 2001

Athena Launches Digital Camera Kit For Philips Velocity™ RSP7+ Platform

GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA - January 30, 2001-- The Athena Group, Inc., today announced the release of its Digital Camera Kit for development of imaging systems in the Philips Velocity™ RSP7+ Rapid Silicon Prototyping environment. Potential applications for the new kit include developing both still and video imaging systems for cellular phones, security, machine vision, automotive, and 2D scanning. The new digital camera kit enables real-time hardware/software co-development and co-verification. The kit comes complete with both the software and hardware required to develop, test, and debug embedded image processing systems on the Philips Velocity RSP7+ platform.

Athena's high performance JPEG Hardware Accelerator delivers ultra fast, low power image processing on the industry-leading Philips Velocity RSP7+. Based on an optimized software and hardware reference design for both image capture and compression, the digital camera kit features two Athena A7™ prototyping expansion boards using Altera® Apex™ FPGAs and a Kodak KAC-0310 EB color digital camera. The image processing software, based on a reference design from the Independent JPEG Group, performs advanced image processing functions including color correction, sensor gain control, and color interpolation.

"We use an approach that maintains software flexibility while offloading the most computationally demanding portion of the JPEG compression to dedicated DSP hardware," said Dr. Jon Mellott, CTO of Athena. "The end result is a higher performance, lower power solution without the design and implementation costs of a dedicated hardware-only design."

Description
The Digital Camera Kit includes software optimized for the Athena High Performance JPEG Accelerator, two Athena A7 Prototyping Expansion Boards, a Kodak KAC-0310 EB color digital camera, a camera interface cable, an ATX power supply upgrade for the Velocity RSP7+, and user support documentation.

For more detailed information, or to order this new product, visit: www.athena-group.com.

About The Athena Group, Inc.
The Athena Group, Inc. licenses high-performance digital signal processing (DSP) technology that delivers breakthrough performance, reduced area, and reduced power consumption in a broad range of system on a chip (SoC) products. Athena's unique patent-pending technology powers such leading edge applications as modems, wireless communications, and video compression. In addition to their high value application-level solutions, Athena also produces a full line of fundamental DSP functions, all suitable for system on a chip (SoC) integration. Athena is a privately held corporation located in Gainesville, FL. Visit The Athena Group at http://www.athena-group.com.

CONTACT:

Pat Rugg, VP Sales and Marketing
The Athena Group, Inc.
5522 NW 43rd St., Suite B
Gainesville, FL 32653
USA

Phone: 352.371.2567 ext. 110
Toll-free: 800.741.7440 ext. 110
Fax: 352.373.5182
Email: prugg@athena-group.com
Internet: http://www.athena-group.com™