Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Maxim Acquires Mobilygen for H.264 Silicon

Maxim Integrated Products agreed to acquire Mobilygen, a privately held, fabless semiconductor company specializes in H.264 video compression, for an undisclosed sum. Maxim said the acquisition will position it to become a key supplier to the $2B video security semiconductor market.


Mobilygen' MG3500 family of H.264 Codecs provide High Definition (HD) or Multi-Channel SD encoding, HD or Multi-Channel SD decoding in System On Chip (SOC) solutions. The MG1264 coprocessor provides a low power solution for Standard Definition (SD) encoding, decoding or full duplex applications. The company is based in Santa Clara, California.


Vijay Ullal, Maxim Group President, commented: "Video security is an important growth market for Maxim. The overwhelming majority of security cameras installed today are analog, whereas recording, storage, analytics, and IP streaming are digital. Video compression is therefore a strategic technology for Maxim in the analog-to-digital video signal path."http://www.maxim-ic.comhttp://www.mobilygen.com

  • Mobilygen is headed by Chris Day (President and CEO), who previously was General Manager of Media Processing at Philips Semiconductor (now NXP), where he led Philips Trimedia DSP efforts into security, PMP, video-over-IP, automotive, and display markets. Before Philips, Chris was Senior Marketing Director for C-Cube Microsystems.


    The company's technical team is led by Sorin Cismas (CTO and founder), who previously was the Chief Scientist at Zoran Corporation.