Feb 10 2015
Cadence Design Systems, Inc. today announced that the Cadence® Tensilica® Xtensa® processor has been designed as the core of the MegaChips frizz always-on sensor hub IC.
MegaChips selected the Xtensa processor after completing a competitive benchmark that showed the Xtensa processor offered over 90 percent lower power consumption when used for pedestrian dead reckoning algorithms, which require Kalman filters.
frizz is a next-generation always-on sensor hub chip designed for smartphones and Internet-of-Things (IoT) wearable devices. MegaChips took advantage of the ultra-low power Xtensa processor architecture, which can perform both control and digital signal processing (DSP), customizing it for maximum throughput with three-way very long instruction word (VLIW) processing, floating point, and four-way single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) processing. By utilizing the highly flexible and automated optimization capabilities of the Xtensa processors, MegaChips was able to achieve optimum power, performance and area results for its frizz battery-operated sensor hub IC.
“We were able to take advantage of the Xtensa processor customization capabilities in this design in a short amount of time, thanks to the Tensilica automated design tools,” said Kenji Nakamura, deputy general manager, AS business Headquarters at MegaChips. “No other customizable processor allows designers to integrate a four-way SIMD and VLIW for maximum throughput with 32-bit RISC control processing, which is required for best power/performance in many IoT applications. These extra capabilities can give frizz a significant advantage in the market and allow frizz to achieve the right low-power profile for wearables.”
MegaChips has been an authorized Tensilica design center since 2008 and has completed many designs using Tensilica processors. The Xtensa processor can be customized to handle both performance-intensive DSP and embedded control processing functions on a single core. The patented automated Xtensa Processor Generator allows designers to create more competitive and differentiated features while achieving very low power consumption.