Buckinghamshire, UK – 9 October 2006 – Aspex Semiconductor™, a UK-based fabless semiconductor company developing leading-edge software programmable “Extreme Processors”, has announced today two new low cost video compression cards. Accelera 2000 (PCI-X) and Accelera 2500 (PCI Express).

Building on Aspex successful Accelera 3000 family, the Accelera 2000 cards offer the same level of performance for MPEG-2 and H.264 video compression, allowing real-time HD video compression with MPEG-2, and a 3x-4x performance uplift for H.264 video compression. Two Accelera 2000 cards can also be installed in an 8-core system to give real-time HD H.264 video compression performance.

Whereas the Accelera 3000 family supports multiple simultaneous HD video compression jobs, the Accelera 2000 family is limited to one MPEG-2 or H.264 HD compression task at a time.

The Accelera 3000 and 2000 PCI-X cards are available now, and the Accelera 2500 and 3500 PCI-Express cards can be pre-ordered for shipment in December.

The H.264 compression software is scheduled for a mid-October release and VC-1 will be available as a software upgrade option in Q1 2007.

Accelera 2000 and 2500 are priced at $4,995 (MSRP). The Accelera 3000 (PCI-X) and the new PCI Express variant (Accelera 3500) are priced at $8,995 (MSRP). The MSRPs include one codec (either H.264 or MPEG-2). Additional codecs can be purchased at $500 per codec at the time of purchase, or upgraded later at a price of $995.

About Aspex Semiconductor Limited

Aspex Semiconductor is a leading edge fabless semiconductor company specialising in the delivery of extreme processors. These high-performance programmable processors replace FPGAs, ASICs and DSPs at a fraction of the cost.

Aspex enables customers to reduce component costs, shorten time to market and reduce risk by moving to software defined platforms. In addition, the company offers services to speed adoption of Aspex products. Aspex Semiconductor has successfully demonstrated its architecture in the market place and by optimising the unique benefits of the Aspex processor family, customers are able to keep pace with the most demanding market conditions.

Headquartered in Buckinghamshire, UK, Aspex serves clients and partners worldwide.
For further information visit the Aspex Semiconductor website at www.aspex-semi.com

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