FROM EDN EUROPE: Standard… but still configurable
By Graham Prophet, EDN Europe -- EDN, April 13, 2006
Based on its Xtensa configurable-processor-core architecture, Tensilica has introduced a number of pre-configured IP variants that it aims at specific market sectors. The range, named the Diamond Standard Processor family, counts six designs in the first release. The Diamond 108Mini is a low-power cacheless RISC controller, optimised for interrupt response and lowest gate count/silicon area. For control applications that need more power than the 108's 280 MIPS at 233 MHz, there is the 212GP, a mid-range RISC controller rated at 325 MIPS. Tensilica aims two further cores at mainstream processing applications: the 232L is a RISC core with MMU intended specifically to host Linux; and 570T is a three-issue static superscalar CPU. Turning to the multimedia environment, the company offers the 330HiFi, a low-power 24-bit audio codec engine, and the 545CK, a three-issue, eight-way SIMD DSP that Tensilica asserts is the highest power licensable DSP available.
Each of these is the outcome of a targeted design exercise that the company has conducted through its tools chain to extend and optimise its architecture in a particular direction. Are they, therefore, intended to be adopted and used as—literally—standard products? Or are they intended as exemplars, to illustrate to specific market sectors that the configurable concept might be of use to them? Both, says Tensilica: while they are fully-synthesisable IP and ready to run, they also remain extensible and configurable in their own right, and users could employ them as jumping-off points for new designs in those same sectors. Supporting the former model is the announcement that NEC, Global Unichip and SMIC will be including the Diamond cores in their ASIC library offerings (in somewhat different ways). NEC will fully incorporate the cores into its library, and will be able to license them on behalf of Tensilica as a single point of contact. SMIC and TSMC—via Global Unichip—will offer "hard" IP versions of the cores, with licensing direct from Tensilica to the ASIC customer.
Speaking recently on an industry panel, Tensilica's vice-president of marketing, Steve Roddy, noted that success for an IP vendor lies in having a "large enough sweet spot of customers." The Diamond series attempts to broaden that sweet spot at a number of key points in the broad range of (generally consumer-application-centric) markets where the company sees volume usage of its IP.
