Tensilica ships 2B Cores to Dataplane Market
October 2012 – At the Linley Processor conference, we had a chance to talk to Chris Rowen of Tensilica regarding their overall position in second place in the CPU/DSP IP Licensing market with tier licensees shipment of their 2 Billionth IP core. The run rate on the cores – called DPUs for Dataplane Processing Units, is at approx 800 Million/year. It was only in 2011 that they shipped their 1 Billionth core.
While in the mobile marketplace, they are not the core application processor and CPU for the devices. Rather, they are focusing on the balance of the SOC for the systems. These functions include baseband modem, audio, image processing, video, data connectivity and encryption/decryption, storage interface and control, and other algorithmic DSP based functiosn. These cores are generally implemented as a multi-core structure (a heterogeneous multi-core design using an SMP memory architecture) that allows for a single unit to support multi-standard 3G/HSPA+, LTE and LTE-Adv, DTV demod, Advanced MIMO WiFi and smart grid baseband communication.
The tier 1 accounts have primarily been using the cores as a DSP solution around other application cores, and the tier 2 accounts are using the cores to create full subsystems including the application processor function. For scalability and process diversity, the IP cores are made available as a synthesizable RTL soft IP block. These blocks can include the security engines that allow for high speed bit/byte level encryption, which makes the cores highly desirable for M2M embedded communication applications.
The cores are supported by a deep knowledge and tool based for applications targeted at mobile devies, consumer and industrial entertainment, home automation and video/still cameras with image processing and control. These functions are now being built by their over 200 licensees that have on going SOC designs for the mobile and home entertainment market. The company is also moving heavily to support the communication side of these mobile devices and the M2M community for the connected home environment.
