NTU R&D Office Deputy Director Professor Liang-Gee Chen Won National Science Council's 2008 "Award for Outstanding Contribution to Technological Transfer"

As Deputy Director of NTU's R&D Office, Dr. Liang-Gee Chen led a research team which successfully developed a MPEG-4 video encoding hardware architecture (related to MPEC IC technology). Because it possessed high performance computing capability as well as considerable software flexibility, and greatly enhanced the mobile applications of entertainment products, Dr. Chen received National Science Council's 2008 "Award for Outstanding Contribution to Technological Transfer."

This new MPEG-4 video encoding hardware architecture developed by Dr. Chen can be widely applied to many different areas of operations. Owing to the high demand for algorithms, the efficiency of pure software MPEG-4 solutions can not be compared with solutions that are built on hardware accelerations. The design of the technology developed by Dr. Liang-Gee Chen was based on a platform, which possessed a hardware's high performance computing capability as well as a software's considerable flexibility. As such, it has a wide range of applications, and its advanced design concept lends itself admirably to the significant reduction of power consumption.

Common applications are found in: network monitoring cameras, multimedia cell phones, video servers, video cameras, MP4 players, portable media players, digital cameras, etc. At present, both domestic and foreign chip makers have the need for video IC design and development. The digital surveillance industry has used the MPEG-4 compression technology to replace the original Motion JPEG technology. Owing to security considerations (such as anti-terrorism),the video surveillance equipment market is expected to grow rapidly year by year, and the new generation MPEG-4 IC will play a preeminent role in the video cell phone and DVD market.

The growing demand for audio and video performance has become the driving force behind the development of MPEG related IC industry. According to statistics released by the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center of the Industrial Technology Research Institute, MPEG-4 will have tremendous potentials in the applications of mobile entertainment products such as video cell phones, constituting an output value of 80%, and DVD players with MPEG-4 add-ons will also become the future trend, constituting 20% of the output value. By the year 2007, over fifty percent of DVD players will contain MPEG-4, so the DVD players will have higher added value. The mainstream applications of MPEG IC will shift from DVD players and digital set top boxes to mobile entertainment products, DVD players, recorders and HDTV. In particular the mobile entertainment products will see the highest growth rate, up to 122%.