ALLENTOWN, Pa.--Lucent Technologies Inc.'s Microelectronics Group here and PacketVideo Corp. of San Diego today announced plans to jointly optimize products for next-generation devices used in wireless products. Under a collaboration agreement, PacketVideo's wireless media software will be optimized for higher performance and low-power consumption when running on Lucent chip sets.

The software will serve Lucent's chip solutions in General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications Services (UMTS)/Enhanced Data for Global Evolution (EDGE) applications. The targeted chip sets will include platforms based on the StarCore SC100 digital signal processor, said Lucent, which is jointly developing the basic DSP architecture with Motorola Inc. under a two-year-old alliance.

"The capabilities of mobile devices are rapidly expanding, and access to the Internet and other rich media are becoming key requirements," observed Denis Regimbal, general manager of the wireless semiconductor business unit in Lucent Microelectronics. "Entertainment, such as viewing movie previews, and time-saving functions, such as calling up local traffic reports, are emerging as exciting potential applications for wireless terminals."

After evaluating multiple software packages for wireless multimedia, Lucent Microelectronics selected PacketVideo's technologies for next-generation applications, Regimbal said. The collaboration will focus on PacketVideo's PVPlatform software, which the San Diego company says is the commercially available wireless streaming video delivery system for handheld devices. The software platform provides encoding, transmission and decoding capabilities, based on the Motion Pictures Expert Group 4 (MPEG-4) compression standard.

"Using the PacketVideo software with Lucent's established position in wireless terminal chip sets--coupled with Lucent's StarCore SC100 capabilities--will help set the benchmark for next-generation multimedia applications," stated James Brailean, president, chief technology officer and co-founder of PacketVideo.