MILPITAS, Calif., Jan. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The next generation DVD format was highly visible at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last week in Las Vegas. The two formatting standards being shown are known as Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Both of these standards allow a significant increase in the amount of data storage over conventional DVD disks. As a result a full feature-length high definition movie can be stored on one disk. Blu-ray will support up to 54 gigabytes of information. While HD-DVD's highest capacity is 45 gigabytes. Both of these standards allow at least a 10X improvement over current DVDs, which can only hold 4.7 gigabytes. This will be the new battleground for video in 2006 and 2007.
Sipex has played a major role in both of these standards offering two different types of products for these player/recorders. The first product is known as the Photo Detector IC (PDIC). This device detects the laser beam reflected as data from the DVD disk. The second product is an Automatic Power Control circuit (APC) which detects and controls the laser power delivered to the DVD disk during the write operation. Both of these devices are highly complex analog circuits that reside on the optical pickup head of a DVD recorder/player. Every PDIC is a custom product for each drive manufactured.
Sipex has already released 2 products for the Blu-ray standard and 4 products for the HD-DVD standard. The first product was sampled in July of 2004. "We are pleased to be part of this new explosive market," said Ralph Schmitt, CEO of Sipex. "Our customers have explicitly told us that our technology is superior to other sources in this area. We expect 2006 to be an excellent growth year in this product category."
Sipex has been designing and manufacturing products for the optical storage market since 2000. A total of 23 products have been introduced over that time. Total shipments to date have exceeded 50 million units. A key performance differentiator is the BiCMOS-based 3 wavelength photodetector that was developed by the Sipex Optical Storage design team. This detector allows one product to address Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, DVD and CD applications simultaneously.
"Our technology can be easily and quickly adapted to either standard", said Ed Lam, Senior VP of Marketing. "We were first to market with working products and we will be rewarded with increased business as these standards are incorporated into consumer products."
About Sipex
Sipex Corporation is a semiconductor company that designs, manufactures and markets high performance, value-added analog integrated circuits (ICs). Sipex serves the broad analog signal processing market with interface, power management and optical storage ICs for use in automotive, portable products, computing, communications, and networking infrastructure markets. The company is headquartered in Milpitas, CA with additional offices in Belgium, Canada, China, Germany, Japan and Taiwan. Sipex sells products direct and through its distribution channels. For more information about Sipex, visit http://www.sipex.com/
Ed Lam
Senior VP, Marketing and Business Development
Phone: 408-934-7500
Fax: 408-935-7600
