September 5, 1995, Montreal, Canada - New benchmarks announced today by Matrox provide a glimpse into the future for imaging applications developed using the 32-bit Matrox Imaging Library (MIL-32). Using a P6 processor, MIL-32 executes operations up to 85% faster than previous testing on Pentium-class PCs. MIL-32 was designed to exploit the increasing power of enabling technologies, allowing imaging developers to take advantage of the speed improvements introduced with new operating systems and new generations of PC processors. MIL-32 will make host-based image processing suitable for an even greater selection of demanding machine vision, image analysis, and medical imaging applications; thus reducing development costs.

Note: Pentium benchmarks performed on a 120 MHz Pentium (Dell Dimension XPS P120C). P6 benchmarks performed on a prototype Intel 133 MHz P6 motherboard.

MIL-32 is a high-level 'C' library for rapid application development, with an extensive set of optimized commands for image processing (point-to-point, statistics, filtering, morphology and geometric transforms), pattern matching, blob analysis, gauging and OCR (optional). MIL-32 runs on a VGA and Matrox's line of frame grabbers and image processors. With the device-independent architecture of MIL-32, imaging operations are performed on the host computer or using accelerator boards. For some specialized applications, even the fastest computer CPU isn't fast enough and dedicated image processors are required. When an application is run on an image processor, the library automatically takes advantage of the on-board accelerators. Another benefit of device independence is that an application written with MIL-32 does not have to be rewritten when moving to future Matrox frame grabbers or faster image processors, thereby protecting the developer's investment. MIL-32 was designed to keep pace with emerging technologies, letting developers work with the most up-to-date tools for building powerful imaging solutions.

The P6 — Intel's uccessor to the vastly popular Pentium series of processors —will make its commercial debut in systems this fall. With its pending introduction comes the promised performance gains expected of a new generation of processors. But the greatest gains will be realized on true 32-bit operating systems such as Windows NT™, running true 32-bit applications.

MIL-32 supports Windows NT™, Windows 95™ and 32-bit DOS extenders.

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