Press Release

Six Fortune Dr. Billerica, MA, 01821
Tel: 508-667-8900 Fax: 508-670-1960 E-Mail: univis@univision.com Internet: www.univision.com

For More Information:
Sheldon Liebman
L&S Marketing, Inc.
(505) 828-2237

Susana Freitas
Univision Technologies, Inc.
(508) 667-8900

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

UNIVISION INTRODUCES NEXT GENERATION FALCON-XL
Unique New Product Features Xilinx FPGAs for Custom Programming

(February 11, 1997 - San Jose, CA) Univision Technologies, Inc., a manufacturer of high performance visualization products for graphic and imaging professionals, is showcasing the next generation of their Falcon product family at the SPIE Photonics West Show in San Jose, CA. The newest product, named Falcon-XL, incorporates the latest FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) technology from Xilinx to provide reconfigurable, real-time image processing performance at a significantly lower price than current DSP based frame grabbers.

The Falcon-XL supports all of the features of Univision's existing Falcon-PCI and more. Key to the new product is the use of FPGAs in both the input and processing modules of the board. Compared to DSPs, FPGAs provide a superior level of parallelism for image processing algorithms which results in significantly higher speeds. With general purpose processors, a fixed instruction set is used and the processor is programmed by changing the order in which instructions are executed. FPGAs, on the other hand, can be reprogrammed at the logic level. There is no fixed instruction set to limit the functionality or flexibility of the product.

For Univision customers, utilizing FPGAs ensures that the functions they need the most will be available as efficiently as possible. In fact, by downloading different image processing code at different times, the entire personality of the product can be changed. Along with a standard image processing library, Univision will continue to develop additional image processing functions for use with the Falcon-XL.

According to Eli Warsawski, President of Univision, the "Falcon-XL is one of the most significant products we have ever developed. By itself, the ability to reconfigure the image processor is significant. But we are also committed to making this product compatible with the existing Falcon family so it will be easy to upgrade. Many of our customers will be able to migrate to this product simply by recompiling their code with our new library."

The new Falcon-XL is similar to the Falcon-PCI in many ways. Both boards feature 4 MB of VRAM, which is segmented as 2 MB for video and 2 MB for non-destructive graphics overlay. Both products can also be configured with up to 64 MB of DRAM for onboard memory. The new product supports a variety of VGA and SVGA resolutions up to 1280x1024 at 72 Hz.

The Falcon-XL begins shipping this quarter. Prices start at under $3,600 including frame grabbing, image processing and accelerated SVGA display. For more information, call Univision at (508) 667-8900, send an E-mail to univis@univision.com or visit the Univision web site at www.univision.com.

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Since 1986, Univision Technologies has been a pioneer in the development of high performance visualization products for graphics and imaging professionals. Our company designs, manufactures and markets high quality, cost-effective solutions used by demanding OEMs and end users in a variety of application areas. Since Univision specializes in applications where large amounts of information must be displayed and processed, our products offer an unique combination of resolution, color, speed and cost to ensure that they meet and exceed the expectations of our users. Univision controllers support a full range of computer architectures (VME, MicroChannel, PCI and VL/ISA) and operating systems (DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows NT, AIX, UNIX and X-Windows) at pixel depths from 8- to 32-bits. Our frame grabbers support standard (NTSC, PAL, SECAM, RS-170) and custom analog and digital video inputs up to 40 MHz. For custom programming, over 150 graphics and image processing functions are available from a variety of languages and compilers to support most application development environments.

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