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New addition to the Matrox Odyssey vision processor family offers scalability, a customizable FPGA and a more powerful processor

February 16, 2005, Birmingham, UK - Today at IPOT 2005, Matrox Imaging announced Matrox Odyssey Xpro+, an enhanced version of the Matrox Odyssey Xpro scalable vision processor board. Like its predecessor, Odyssey Xpro+ integrates the latest off-the-shelf and custom technologies with an established, fourth-generation architecture to deliver unprecedented performance and value.

Matrox Odyssey Xpro+

Matrox Odyssey Xpro+ features the latest version of the freescale™ G4 PowerPC™ embedded microprocessor with a core frequency starting at 1.4 GHz, a state-of-the-art Oasis processing and router ASIC and a customizable co-processor FPGA. The single-slot Odyssey Xpro+ also offers over 5 GB per second of memory bandwidth, up to 2 GB of DDR SDRAM memory and up to 2 GB per second of external I/O bandwidth. These features, combined with PCI-X bus technology and linearly scalable architecture, equip the Odyssey Xpro+ with the power and flexibility needed for the most demanding vision applications.

Matrox Oasis ASIC

The Matrox Imaging designed Oasis ASIC is the pivotal component on all boards in the Matrox Odyssey family. This high-density chip integrates a CPU bridge, main memory controller, Pixel Accelerator and Links Controller.

The Pixel Accelerator (PA) is a parallel processor core that accelerates neighborhood, point-to-point and LUT mapping operations. It consists of an array of 64 processing elements all working in parallel. Operating at a core frequency of 167 MHz enables the PA to process up to two billion pixels per second.

The Links Controller (LINX) is the router that manages all data movement inside and outside the processing node, which consists of the Pixel Accelerator, CPU and main memory. It can handle several concurrent video and message streams, thereby offloading data management tasks from the CPU and PA and allowing them to focus on image processing tasks.

With over 30 million transistors, the Oasis also incorporates a 128-bit wide, 167 MHz double data rate DRAM interface that delivers up to 5.3 GB per second of memory bandwidth.

Customizable co-processor FPGA

For operations not accelerated by the PA, Matrox Odyssey Xpro+ includes a configurable co-processor FPGA. This additional co-processor is based on the Altera® Stratix® II family of pin-compatible FPGA devices and includes a bank of QDRII SRAM, which delivers an aggregate memory bandwidth of 4 GB/sec (i.e., 2 GB/sec input and 2 GB/sec output). Data to and from the co-processor FPGA travels through two ports with a combined capacity of 2 GB/sec. Binary operators, large LUT mappings and warping are just a sample of the operations accelerated by the co-processor FPGA, which can be further customized by Matrox Imaging upon request or through a third-party EDA tool with add-on from Matrox Imaging.

Frame grabber modules

Like the Odyssey Xpro, the Odyssey Xpro+ can capture from the majority of area or line scan video sources, thanks to a standard PCI mezzanine card (PMC) site located on the board that allows for the addition of Camera Link®, analog or LVDS/RS-422 frame grabber modules.

All-encompassing software environment

The Matrox Odyssey Xpro+ offers developers a choice of application programming interfaces (APIs) and programming models. The board can be programmed using the award-winning, hardware-independent Matrox Imaging Library (MIL) or the Matrox Odyssey Native Library (ONL), each with royalty-free run-time environments.

Developers are provided with high-level algorithms and the ability to distribute workload across multiple boards. Highly optimized for the Odyssey family's onboard processors, these software libraries are carefully tuned to exhibit low function call overhead, thereby maximizing application efficiency and performance. In terms of board control, developers can either run their application remotely from the host PC, run it entirely on the board itself, or write their own custom functions for the Odyssey's onboard processors.

The Matrox Odyssey family offers support for Microsoft® Windows® 2000, Windows® XP and Linux. The Matrox Odyssey Xpro+ will be available in Q1 2005.

About Matrox Imaging

Matrox Imaging is the only leading designer and manufacturer of PC-based hardware and software for machine vision, image analysis and medical imaging with over 25 years of industry experience to meet customer needs. Headquartered in Dorval, Quebec, Canada, Matrox is a privately held company with international offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. For more company information, visit: www.matrox.com/imaging/about/.

For more information, please contact:

Catherine Overbury

Marketing Communications Manager

Matrox Imaging

1055 St. Regis Blvd.

Dorval, Quebec, H9P 2T4

Canada

Telephone: (514) 685-2630 ext. 2459

Fax: (514) 822-6273

coverbur@matrox.com