San Ramon, 18 October 2023 - The MPEG-4 Industry Forum (M4IF, www.m4if.org) today announced that it recently signed up its 100th member, Amphion Semiconductor Ltd, of Belfast, Northern Ireland. M4IF was founded in May 2000, as a not-for-profit organization based in Switzerland, with as its goal "To further the adoption and widespread use of the MPEG-4 Standard, by establishing MPEG-4 as an accepted standard among application developers, service providers, content creators and end users". M4IF has steadily grown since its creation; without actively seeking new members, the membership has now passed 100 and keeps growing.

These members, which include many of the major technology providers in streaming, wireless and broadcast multimedia and representatives of the MPEG-4 user community, have all subscribed to making MPEG-4 a success. "MPEG-4 is the only open, comprehensive technology for a wide range of interactive multimedia applications", said Rob Koenen, president of M4IF.

The first achievement of M4IF was to get MPEG-4 patent holders to discuss joint licensing schemes. Licensing of MPEG-4 - to be dealt with outside of M4IF - has been announced for coming January. M4IF is now concentrating on interoperability testing and marketing of the standard. "We have over 20 companies exchanging MPEG-4 streams and files, and these companies are committed to make their implementations compatible. MPEG-4 stands for true interoperability", said Koenen. "We are building an open infrastructure in which all parties can play. Technology providers, members of the content food chain and consumers all stand to benefit from this infrastructure."

"In common with all M4IF members, Amphion Semiconductor has a vested interest in the widespread proliferation of the MPEG-4 standard" commented J. G. Doherty, CEO of Amphion, the leading provider of semiconductor intellectual-property cores for System-on-a-Chip silicon; Amphion provides ultra low power MPEG-4 core solutions for multimedia communications designers. "As the hundredth M4IF member, Amphion expects to benefit tangibly from the forum's activities, such as MPEG-4 promotion initiatives, and developers events like the WEMP exposition."

M4IF works together with other organizations that build on the MPEG-4 standard, such as the Internet Streaming Media Alliance, which recently released its open specification for Internet streaming based on MPEG-4 (ISMA, www.isma.tv) and the Wireless Multimedia Forum (WMF, www.wmmforum.com). Joint efforts address interoperability testing and marketing of MPEG-4.

About M4IF
M4IF is open to all parties that support the goal of M4IF, the promotion of the MPEG-4 Standard, against a yearly fee of 3000 USD. M4IF carries out activities that are beyond of the scope of the ISO/IEC MPEG work group, which created the MPEG-4 standard. This includes:

• Promoting the standard, and serving as a single point of information on MPEG-4 technology, products and services;
• Initiating discussions leading to the potential establishment of patent pools outside of M4IF, that should grant a license to an unlimited number of applicants throughout the world under reasonable terms and conditions that are demonstrably free of any unfair competition;
• Organization of MPEG-4 exhibitions and tutorials.
• Creating industrial focus around the standard - which part of the MPEG-4 toolbox to use in which market?

M4IF currently has 103 full members. Recently, M4IF created the associate membership at the 300 USD annual level, open for not-for-profit organizations such as government organizations and universities, of which many participate in MPEG itself. M4IF has already signed up its first two associate members.

About Amphion
Amphion is the leading supplier of application-specific cores for IP-based System-on-a-Chip (SoC) integrated circuit designs for multimedia, wireless and broadband communications. Amphion delivers high-performance solutions for video and image compression, advanced encryption, and speech and channel coding with a comprehensive range of silicon-optimized products. Using proprietary techniques for the direct-mapping of processing functions and algorithms into hardware, Amphion develops and licenses semiconductor intellectual-property (SIP) cores that realize 10X to 1000X improvements in performance over conventional implementations using software-programmable DSP processors. Amphion is a privately held company with corporate headquarters and engineering in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK and worldwide sales and marketing headquarters in San Jose, California. Amphion was formerly known as Integrated Silicon Systems Ltd, or ISS. For more information, visit http://www.amphion.com

More information:
http://www.m4if.org
Lynne Apodaca
Executive Director, MPEG-4 Industry Forum
2694 Bishop Drive, Suite 275
San Ramon, CA 94583 USA

Tel: +1 925 275 6653
Fax: +1 925 275 6691
Email: [email protected]