Paris, - 28 March 2000 - In iHOME, IMEC’s new intelligent Home Network of the future, all consumer appliances and communications equipment will be linked to a home LAN, and will be remotely controllable through mobile telephony and the Internet. 

Demonstrated this week at the DATE Exhibition, Paris, iHOME represents the application of IMEC’s core competence in SOC design technology to the three key elements of the project: an intelligent access terminal, wireless LAN and MPEG-4 multimedia image compression.

The wireless LAN network, with a capacity of 155 Mb/s, integrates an IMEC-designed OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) modem, offering top performance even in fading channel conditions and concurrent multiple access opportunities.  IMEC’s Ozone chip is the first of its kind worldwide for optimised MPEG-4 functionality, allowing a maximum frame rate of 30 fps at CIF resolution.  The intelligent access terminal provides a low-cost, reconfigurable “Plug&Play” solution for embedding networking and communication capabilities in consumer appliances.

These solutions are based on IMEC’s work in design technology and on the design of telecom and multimedia systems, which focus on bridging the system level productivity gap by developing new design methodologies and EDA tools to support the design team in system-level exploration of embedded systems.

IMEC has also launched several new tools at DATE.  These include FAST, an efficient front-end architecture simulator for digital telecom applications, providing end-to-end performance simulations of complete digital telecommunication links.  Also launched is SWAN (Substrate Waveform Analysis Tool), which enhances VHDL simulation flow by performing an analysis of the substrate noise generated by digital circuits.

These and other aspects of IMEC’s design technologies and tools were included in live demonstrations and conference papers.  Demonstrations included:

• OCAPI C++ Based Hardware Design of Complex Digital Systems: design of a digital QAM16 receiver

• SOC++ Executable System Specification Using C++: executable specification of an ADSL model

• Modelling and Simulation of Mixed-Signal Transceiver Front Ends: introducing FAST (Front-end architecture simulator for digital telecom applications) and DISHARMONY, a tool for automatic generation of compact models of weakly nonlinear circuit behaviour.

• High-Level Simulation of Substrate-noise Generation from Digital Circuits: a new approach to modelling noise generation by switching circuits

• ATOMIUM CAD Environment for System-Level Performance and Power Optimisation: A toolbox for optimising Memory l/0, demonstrated in the real-life design of IMEC’s MPEG-4 solution

• ACROPOLIS: Multimedia oriented data transfer pre-compiler: a tool to reduce power and system bus load as well as improve CPU performance

Further details are included in the appended documentation.

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About IMEC

IMEC was founded in 1984 and today is Europe’s leading independent research center for the development and licensing of state-of-the-art microelectronic technologies. IMEC is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, and employs about 900 people, of whom 75 percent are highly qualified scientists and engineers. Its $90 million revenue is derived from agreements and contracts with government agencies, aerospace and semiconductor industry companies worldwide. IMEC’s activities concentrate on design of integrated information and communication systems; silicon process technology; silicon technology and device integration; microsystems, components and packaging; advanced training in microelectronics. IMEC has a sub 0,25-micron 200-mm pilot line and is ISO 9001 certified. News from IMEC is located at www.imec.be.

For further information:

Marianne Van den Broeck

Public Relations & Marketing Communications Manager

Tel.: +32 16 28 14 91

Fax: +32 16 28 16 37

e-mail: marianne.vandenbroeck@imec.be