Market Rapidly Embraces Tensilica’s Diamond Standard Processor Cores in 2Q06

As of the end of the second quarter of 2006, Tensilica licensed 12 Diamond Standard series cores. This number included 10 new customers who had not previously used Tensilica’s processor products. In most of these designs, the Diamond Standard processors are used as the main SOC (system-on-chip) controller or main DSP (digital signal processing) engine.

“For the customer who just wants a drop-in solution for fast deployment late in the design cycle, the Diamond Standard processors hit the market’s sweet spots,” stated Chris Rowen, Tensilica’s president and CEO. “The typical processor customer wants standard control or DSP functions in the smallest, most power-efficient form factor – and that’s what we have to offer. We’re particularly pleased that our Diamond Standard processor family opened up doors at new customer sites, expanding our reach in the SOC design community.”

More at: http://www.tensilica.com/news_events/pr_2006_07_18.htm

Tensilica Launches Campaign to Raise $20,000 for San Jose Ballet at DAC

Tensilica is launching a campaign to raise $20,000 for Ballet San Jose (California) at this year’s Design Automation Conference (DAC), July 24-27 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. By painting 10”x10” canvases, conference attendees will artistically contribute to giant murals, designed by German artist Lothar Krebs, that will be given to leading Silicon Valley companies that make substantial donations to Ballet San Jose. Ballerinas from Ballet San Jose will be assisting the artists in the Tensilica booth, number 3548, at the front of the North Hall.

"Every chip designer is, in many ways, an artist. So at DAC, we’re celebrating the artist within each of us by letting attendees paint parts of giant pictures that tell the story of chip design,” stated Chris Rowen, Tensilica’s president and CEO. “We’ll use this artwork to support another art – ballet. Ballet San Jose is an integral part of our Silicon Valley culture and deserves widespread support.”

During the 4-day DAC exhibition, attendees will be able to paint part of a different picture each day. To preview the pictures and find out more, see http://www.tensilica.com/company/DAC_2006.htm

Morgan Kaufmann Publishes Tensilica Book Targeting SOC Designers

“Designing SOCs with Configured Cores: Unleashing the Tensilica Xtensa and Diamond Cores,” by Steve Leibson, technology evangelist at Tensilica, is now available. The book is a no-nonsense guide to the design of 21st-century mega-gate SOCs using nanometer silicon and emphasizes a processor-centric system on chip (SOC) design style. “Designing SOCs with Configured Cores” also provides SOC designers with the most comprehensive assessment available of the practical aspects of configuring and using multiple processor cores to achieve their very difficult and ambitious price, performance, and power design goals.

The book, published by Morgan Kaufmann, provides SOC designers with a practical introduction to three basic techniques of modern SOC design: use of optimized standard CPU and DSP processors cores, application-specific configuration of processor cores, and system-level design of SOCs using configured cores as the key building block. The book has a list price of $59.95 and is available at www.books.elsevier.com.

PnpNetwork Licenses Diamond Standard 330HiFi and 212GP for Mobile Phone TV Chip Designs

PnpNetwork Technologies, Inc., of Seoul, Korea, has licensed two Diamond Standard processor cores for their digital mobile broadcasting chip designs for mobile consumer broadcast TV applications and video-enabled handset designs. PnpNetwork will use the Diamond Standard 330HiFi for high-quality audio processing and the Diamond Standard 212GP as a control processor for their chip designs. See press release for more details: http://www.tensilica.com/news_events/pr_2006_07_06.htm

NVIDIA GoForce 5500 Employs Tensilica’s Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine

The Xtensa HiFi 2 Audio Engine drives the high-quality 24-bit audio processing in the recently introduced NVIDIA GoForce 5500 handheld graphics processing unit (GPU). The NVIDIA GoForce 5500 brings high-fidelity surround sound as well fluid digital TV, rapid multi-shot photography and console-class 3D graphics to mobile phones. Phones based on the NVIDIA GoForce 5500 handheld GPU are expected to be available from key handset manufacturers before the 2006 holiday season.

For more information, see: http://www.tensilica.com/news_events/pr_2006_06_27.htm

Chris Rowen's Keynote at 2006 World Congress

Over 500 people attended Chris Rowen's keynote address to the 2006 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing in Las Vegas last Monday, June 26. His presentation is titled, "The Reinvention of the Microprocessor". If you missed it, you can see a PDF of the presentation at:
http://www.tensilica.com/pdf/Reinvention%20CD.pdf

Silistix Partners with Tensilica to Develop a Demonstration Test Chip for Portable Multimedia Applications

Silistix and Tensilica are collaborating on a demonstration chip for low-power, portable multimedia applications. The CMOS chip will demonstrate the ability of the Silistix CHAIN self-timed interconnect technology to work with high-performance processor cores from Tensilica along with additional silicon cores from Denali and sci-worx at a 65nm process node. For more information, see http://www.tensilica.com/news_events/pr_2006_06_26.htm

WiQuest Licenses Xtensa for Low-Power Wireless USB Chip Design

WiQuest Communications, Inc. has deployed the Xtensa configurable processor in WiQuest’s WQST110 ultrawideband (UWB) wireless USB chip design. “We licensed the Xtensa processor because it was the lowest power processor on the market, which is essential for wireless designs,” stated Greg Christison, vice president of Engineering, WiQuest Communications. “We were also impressed with Tensilica’s automated capabilities for configuring the processor."
Read more about what Greg Christison had to say at:
http://www.tensilica.com/news_events/pr_2006_06_22.htm

Neterion Renews Tensilica Xtensa LX Configurable Processor License

Neterion renewed its license for Tensilica’s Xtensa LX configurable processor. Neterion is the market leader in the 10-gigabit Ethernet adapter market, and is using the Xtensa LX processor for next-generation designs.

"Tensilica’s automated configurable processor design approach gives us the speed we need with lower power and smaller die size,” stated Dennis Shwed, Neterion’s vice president of hardware engineering. “Tensilica’s Xtensa LX processor delivers the performance levels required for demanding 10-gigabit Ethernet in high-speed server and storage networking applications.”

For more information, see http://www.tensilica.com/news_events/pr_2006_05_31.htm

New Books Showcase EDA and IC Design Methodologies

The new “Electronic Design Automation Circuits Handbook,” edited by Grant Martin, Tensilica’s chief scientist, Louis Scheffer of Cadence Design Systems and Luciano Lavagno of Cadence Berkeley Laboratories, is a 2-book reference that provides a comprehensive overview of the design automation algorithms, tools, and methodologies used to design integrated circuits. Several of the chapters in this authoritative work were contributed by experts at Tensilica. Find out more about these exciting books at http://www.tensilica.com/news_events/pr_2006_05_30.htm