Cavium Networks agreed to acquire W&W Communications, a fabless semiconductor start-up based in Sunnyvale, California, for approximately $19.3 million. 
W&W specializes in low power, super low latency and full-High Definition video processing solutions with single and multi-stream capabilities. The company provides a range of chips, software and board level solutions for single and multi-channel, High and Standard Definition H.264 applications at up to full 1080p encode and decode at 60 frames per second. W&W leverages a proprietary Super Low Latency (SLL) technology that produces perceptual lossless video quality at sub-frame encode-decode delay. Other features include a flexible encoder toolset with in-loop de-blocking filter, single-pass bit rate control, content-adaptive noise filtering, programmable cost functions for motion vector and prediction mode coding, efficient search algorithms, large search area, 1/2 and 1/4 pixel motion estimation interpolation and error resiliency and concealment.
W&W Communications has an R&D center in Beijing, China.
Cavium noted that the digital video market consists of five distinct segments, namely capture, process, transport, receive and display. Today Cavium Networks' single and multi-core processors are used in a range of video transport applications. High performance, video encode and decode capabilities are needed in the capture, process and display market segments. High end applications in these markets require encode and decode with pristine video quality, super low latency, single and multiple HD video stream processing up to 1080p at 60 frames/second and beyond. These requirements today are primarily delivered by multi-chip DSP based solutions. Low end requirements which include decode only or encode of low resolution streams are primarily delivered by ASIC based solutions.http://www.caviumnetworks.comhttp://www.wwcoms.com/
- W&W is headed by Lars Herlitz (president & CEO), who previously was founder, president and CEO of DSP Research, which was acquired by W&W Communications in 2003.
