CEVA, Inc. Makes Strategic Equity Investment in eyeSight Mobile Technologies, a Gesture Technology Company

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Nov. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA); (LSE: CVA), the leading licensor of silicon intellectual property (SIP) platform solutions and DSP cores, today announced that it has made a minority equity investment, together with Mitsui & Co. Global Investment Ltd, in eyeSight Mobile Technologies, a leader in touch-free interfaces for smartphones, tablets, PCs, smart TVs and other digital devices. Under the equity investment agreement, eyeSight will offer its advanced portfolio of touch-free interface technologies, including gesture recognition and finger tracking software, to users of the CEVA-MM3000 image signal processing (ISP) and video platform. The combined offering will deliver an ultra-low power, software-based solution, enabling the cost-efficient deployment of gesture recognition technologies in mass market devices.

Gideon Wertheizer, CEO of CEVA, commented: "The combination of our fully programmable CEVA-MM3000 platform together with eyeSight's industry-leading gesture technology will clearly demonstrate the versatility of our powerful, software-based ISP and video platform. This equity investment in eyeSight is aimed at expanding the addressable markets for our CEVA-MM3000 platform to include the burgeoning embedded vision and scene analysis arenas. We are strategically focused to further enhance our DSP and platform ecosystems, providing our customers with broader solutions to enable true product differentiation and to shorten their time to market."

The complexity of gesture recognition applications continues to rapidly evolve and poses a significant burden on CPU performance and power consumption. By offloading the main CPU from performing advanced gesture technologies to the CEVA-MM3000, it is estimated that the system power efficiency can be improved by a factor of 20X, crucial for any battery powered device. Enabling low cost deployment for gesture applications, eyeSight leverages the existing camera in any device to enable the gesture functionality without any increase in bill-of-materials. In addition, the fully programmable nature of the CEVA-MM3000 platform facilitates future upgrades of eyeSight's technologies through software updates, and allows customers to add their own proprietary features and algorithms to the platform.

Gideon Shmuel, CEO of eyeSight, commented: "We are pleased to strengthen our relationship with CEVA towards advancing the adoption of gesture technologies in mass market devices. Semiconductor vendors require higher performance, lower power and more flexible processor solutions to successfully incorporate advanced gesture technology into their product designs.  Our strategic partnership with CEVA brings together our industry-leading gesture recognition technologies with the industry's most advanced ISP and video platform to offer the CEVA-MM3000 users a powerful, software-based solution that delivers dramatically improved performance when compared to existing RISC-based architectures."

The CEVA-MM3000 is a family of scalable, low-power, fully programmable ISP and video solutions, targeting pre and post processing of HD video and imaging functions, image pipeline, ISP applications, scene analysis and video codecs. The CEVA-MM3000 comprises a complete hardware platform, pre-optimized software layers, and a comprehensive software development environment, including compilers, debuggers, simulators and development boards. The solution is scalable to meet various market needs, from smartphones and tablets to smart TVs and set-top boxes.

CEVA and Mitsui & Co. Global Investment Ltd participated in the current investment round of $4.2 million.

 

About eyeSight

eyeSight Mobile Technologies Ltd. is a leader in touch free Interfaces for digital devices. Its technology allows users to control digital devices with simple hand gestures by using the built-in camera, advanced real-time image processing and machine vision algorithms. For more information, visit www.eyesight-tech.com.

 

About CEVA, Inc.

CEVA is the world's leading licensor of silicon intellectual property (SIP) DSP cores and platform solutions for the mobile handset, portable and consumer electronics markets. CEVA's IP portfolio includes comprehensive technologies for cellular baseband (2G / 3G / 4G), multimedia (HD video, Image Signal Processing (ISP) and HD audio), voice over packet (VoP), Bluetooth, Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) and Serial ATA (SATA). In 2010, CEVA's IP was shipped in over 600 million devices, powering handsets from 7 out of the top 8 handset OEMs, including Nokia, Samsung, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and ZTE. Today, more than one in every three handsets shipped worldwide is powered by a CEVA DSP core. For more information, visit ceva-dsp.com. Follow CEVA on twitter at www.twitter.com/cevadsp.

 

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements about the market opportunities and anticipated performance of the combined offering that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that if they materialize or prove incorrect, could cause the results of CEVA to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. The risks, uncertainties and assumptions include: the ability of the combined offering of CEVA-MM3000 platform and eyeSight gesture technologies to achieve the anticipated performance, CEVA's success in penetrating new markets with the combined offering, offerings by competitors, the possibility that the markets for CEVA's technologies may not develop as expected, and other risks relating to CEVA's business, including, but not limited to, those that are described from time to time in its SEC filings. CEVA assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information, which speak as of their respective dates.

 

 

SOURCE CEVA, Inc.