Technology

Background
Memorylink was founded in 1998 with a unique strategy: to develop and deploy the best integrated technology solutions for the transmission of high-quality, low-latency multimedia, in the unlicensed wireless bands.  Since that time we have applied ourselves to maturing the technologies that underpin our corporate objectives. There are three key elements:  the Malachi Malleable Circuits architecture, ADK Video Compression, and our unparalleled expertise in delivering video and other error-sensitive information across wired and wireless networks. Now that we have perfected the technologies and filed the patents, we are introducing a family of exciting products, first among them Flanger™ and Strongbow™.

Malachi™- Memorylink’s Malleable Circuits Architecture
The key to Memorylink's technology strategy is Malachi, our Malleable Circuits architecture. This concept is based on reprogrammable hardware, commonly called field programmable logic arrays, and the Shapeware that programs it. Malachi enables the implementation of a class of solutions that partitions a problem into many small steps that are undertaken in parallel by extremely fast, optimally-configured hardware – hardware that is specifically shaped to the problem. In contrast, microprocessor- and DSP-based solutions require that the problem be decomposed into small steps that are undertaken in sequence, thereby taking 20 to 100 times longer for the same computation. Our architecture has the additional advantage of allowing us to choose a class of problem and of solution that is well-adapted to this approach.

ASIC Conventional Wisdom
Such problems are conventionally approached with an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit - an ASIC.  This solution has several difficulties, stemming from the fact that the "masks" that are required to "cast" the silicon are complicated, time-consuming, and expensive. A $1 million charge is not an uncommon and it often takes from 20 to 30 weeks from the time the design is submitted to the mask shop until the first completed parts are available – and this comes after the design is completed.
The pressure on the design team to deliver working ASICs the first time is enormous. The expensive and drawn-out nature of the mask and silicon phases means that if the first chips don't work there's real trouble. Therefore, one checks, simulates, checks, simulates again; designs again sometimes taking one to two years in the process. In addition, there can be a real reluctance to attempt to include any additional customer features after the design process has begun for fear of further increasing the risk.

Evolution - Years or  Months?
All this time and expense means that once an ASIC is in production, it has to stay on the market unchanged for long enough to recover development costs and return a profit say at least two years. This means that each step in the evolution of a ASIC-based solution takes from two and one-half to five years!  By contrast, a Malachi-based solution evolves without changing the hardware as each step focuses on the Shapeware that defines the solution. Since new Shapeware is easily applied to a Malachi-based implementation – even in the field – evolution can proceed at a rate that is measured in months rather than years.

What this means to the user
Malachi means scalability with much greater dimension, resulting in agile, interactive systems that shift the power from the product to the user. Malachi defies competitive technologies with their limiting built-in obsolescence, instead promising more control, more flexibility and a far greater value over cast-in-silicon circuitry.

Products That Actually Get Smarter?
Yes, it's true. Like people growing wiser from education and experience, Malachi supports products that actually get smarter over time.
Memorylink's exclusive approach to product innovation is based on the Malachi architecture. Think of it as a shared understanding between hardware and software. With the Malachi architecture, hardware becomes reprogramable reshapable and is partitioned to fit the problem. It is entirely reconfigurable so that the product can modify itself when the problem so demands.
Solutions supported by the Malachi architecture include:

ADK Compression Video for humans
The second major leg in Memorylink's technology is our unique video compression. As a wavelet-based algorithm we call ADK™, for Ascending-Descending Keys, this method breaks the compression process into many small steps that can be taken in parallel, making it ideal for implementation in the Malachi architecture. The speed of this process makes it possible to greatly reduce the required data transmission rate without adding the delays that conventional schemes such as MPEG require: a Malachi-based implementation of ADK can transfer compressed video at reasonable data rates with an end-to-end delay that is well within human reaction time. Compare this to the seconds-long delays of MPEG.

This low latency means that ADK video circuits can be applied in many applications where compressed video has heretofore been useless. Imagine the impossibility of driving a car when you see everything two seconds after it happens, and how ADK solves that problem. Or, imagine practical video conferencing that really transfers useful body language and facial expressions!

ADK further allows an unprecedented degree of control over the parameters of the compression/ decompression process. Bits per frame, frame rate, and detail level are all fully controllable, allowing ADK to be precisely fitted to the application.