Company info sheet for:

"The Imaging Products Group provides board-level solutions to OEMs and integrators in machine vision, image analysis and medical imaging. Our hardware product line ranges from frame grabbers to image processors. By optimally combining off-the-shelf components and Matrox-designed ASICs, our boards have the best price/performance in the industry. With our easy-to-use Windows-based application and our library, customers speed through application development. And since our software tools are device-independent, customers simply move their application from one board to another or from the current generation to the next. Our products are designed specifically to reduce development time and costs."

"Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd. (MES) is a privately-owned Canadian company based in Montreal, Quebec. Established in 1976 by two electrical engineers, Branko Matic, Chairman; and Lorne Trottier, President; Matrox's first product was a custom-designed, microprocessor-based video interface for minicomputers - the first of its kind. During the early years, Matrox's significan achievements included: a 100 million+ dollar contract with the US Army to supply EIDS videodisk training systems and a line of financial information display products for system integrators on Wall Street. A more recent achievement is the over 3 million Matrox MGA graphics accelerator boards sold since 1994, the year when the graphics division of MES became Matrox Graphics Inc. (MGI)."

"Matrox is divided into four business divisions: Graphics, Imaging Products, Video Products and Network Products. The head office is a 26,000 square meter facility (255 000 square feet), housing all four divisions including sales, marketing, engineering, and manufacturing."

"The emphasis at Matrox has always been on research and development. Typically, over 15% of sales is reinvested on R & D. Of 1050 employees, 350 are engineers involved in board, ASIC, and software design. Over the years, Matrox has developed a total of 32 custom ASICs for graphics, video and imaging. The objective is to get first pass silicon into production. So far, greater than 95% of Matrox ASICs have been successful on the first pass, attributed to solid design methodology and extensive simulation testing."

"With over 20 years experience in developing computer hardware, Matrox customers benefit from an extensive knowledge base. For example, the company has been developing on the PC platform since the dawn of PC-AT. Matrox continues to be at the forefront of PC technology and its customers include key players in the computing industry such as Compaq, IBM, Gateway, HP, Olivetti, Siemens Nixdorf, and Sun Microsystems."

"Matrox deals mainly with OEMs, system integrators, VARs, and distributors. Long-lasting relationships are formed with these types of organizations because Matrox meets their demands: leading-edge technology, technical consulting services, integration assistance, and high manufacturing standards. Matrox customers consistently stay with the company over multiple product generations."

"Matrox corporate offices are located in Canada (headquarters), USA, France, Germany, UK and Hong Kong. Sales representatives are located in over 20 countries worldwide. Approximately 60% of sales are from North America and 40% from Europe and Asia."

"Matrox has been consistently profitable since inception and has lately experienced considerable growth. From 1995 to 1996, overall sales grew from $250 million to $570 million."

"Matrox has the technical competence and experience to use new technology as soon as it is available - such as new bus architectures, new design methodologies, new software development tools, etc. The objective is to exploit new technology in order to bring cost and performance benefits to customers as soon as possible."

"Matrox Imaging solutions are a combination of powerful hardware and easy-to-use device-independent software tools. The complete range of hardware consists of everything from a basic standard grabber to a powerful, fully flexible frame grabber with on-board intelligence and integrated display."

"Matrox Imaging Products have been designed specifically to decrease customers' development time and costs, and to protect their investment. The group's software tools ensure fast development; and since the software is device-independent, once an application is built for one board, it can be moved to another with virtually no rewriting. OEMs are able to build a range of systems with a range of price/performance levels. Integrators can solve a range of applications to meet their clients' diverse requirements. Since the group's software is device-independent, customers have a guaranteed migration path."