Alphamosaic Ltd was a fabless semiconductor company specialising in low power mobile multimedia processors, based on their

VideoCore VideoCore is a low-power mobile multimedia processor originally developed by Alphamosaic Ltd and now owned by Broadcom. Its two-dimensional DSP architecture makes it flexible and efficient enough to decode (as well as encode) a number of multime ...

architecture. Alphamosaic was founded in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge beca ...

, UK by Robert Swann and Steve Barlow in October 2000, as a spin out from

Cambridge Consultants Cambridge Consultants, part of Capgemini Invent, develops breakthrough products and services, creates and licenses intellectual property, and provides business consultancy in technology-critical issues for clients worldwide. The company has offic ...

supported by venture capital from Prelude Trust, ACT and TTP Ventures. Developed at a time when video and multimedia processing was challenging on mobile devices, the technology centered round a novel 2D digital signal processor (DSP) architecture called

for low-power processing of video and images. It was used in consumer devices including phones from

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

and the first Apple video iPod to handle video record and playback, image capture and processing, audio capture and processing, graphics, games and ringtones. In September 2004, Alphamosaic was acquired by

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

for $123 million,Broadcom Acquires Alphamosaic Limited, a Leading Developer of Mobile Multimedia Processors for Cellular Phones
accessed on 29 March 2008. forming its Mobile Multimedia group on the

Cambridge Science Park The Cambridge Science Park, founded by Trinity College in 1970, is the oldest science park in the United Kingdom. It is a concentration of science and technology related businesses, and has strong links with the nearby University of Cambridge ...

site. Initial products VC01 and VC02 were multimedia coprocessors, later products were application processors. For a list of products, see

References

Broadcom Companies based in Cambridge 2004 mergers and acquisitions Defunct computer companies of the United Kingdom Defunct manufacturing companies of the United Kingdom {{manufacturing-company-stub

See also

References