Andes and SEGGER Partner to Deliver Professional Development Solutions for RISC-V

Hsinchu, Taiwan. – March 11, 2019 – Andes Technology Corporation (TWSE:6533), a founding member of the RISC-V Foundation and the leading supplier of 32/64-bit embedded CPU cores with solutions serving in excess of 1-billion diversified SoCs in 2018, and SEGGER Microcontroller, a leading supplier of software, hardware and development tools for embedded systems, today announced the availability of SEGGER powerful development solutions support for Andes RISC-V processor families.

Andes RISC-V processors are based on AndeStar™ V5 architecture, which maintains the full compatibility to RISC-V technology and thus inherits its compact, modular and extensible advantages. In addition, AndeStar™ V5 architecture brings Andes-extended features already proven in high-volume V3 AndesCore™ processors to be effective and beneficial for embedded applications with enhanced performance, code size and development support. Andes RISC-V cores include ultra-compact N22 for applications such as entry-level microcontrollers and deeply-embedded protocol processing, 32/64-bit N25/NX25 for high-speed control tasks, N25F/NX25F for floating-point intensive applications and A25/AX25 for Linux-based applications.

SEGGER’s professional libraries and tools for embedded system development are designed for simple usage and optimized for the requirements imposed by resource-constrained embedded systems. The J-Link debug probes, Ozone – the accompanying debugger – and Embedded Studio – the powerful cross platform C/C++ IDE (Integrated Development Environment) – are available to support embedded system developers to create their RISC-V based embedded systems. In addition SEGGER provides an RTOS, communication and security software to help developers design their systems without reinventing everything from scratch while benefitting from SEGGER’s more than 25 years of experience in the industry.

“Andes is determined to provide the best RISC-V solutions to help our customers design SoC exceeding their expectations. We understand that embedded software development is a major part of any SoC project.” said Dr. Charlie Su, CTO and Executive VP of Andes Technology. “With SEGGER’s industry-leading development tools support, the software designers can easily and quickly develop compact, efficient embedded applications that benefit from standard RISC-V features and Andes extensions.”

“With more than 25 years of experience in the embedded industry, we at SEGGER are The Embedded Experts and produce state-of-the-art development tools which simply work. We use our own tools for development and production to make sure, that we can deliver the highest possible quality to our customers”, said Alex Grüner, CTO of SEGGER. “We are pleased to support Andes RISC-V processors with our professional development solutions for easy development and faster time to market.”

For more information about Andes RISC-V processors, click http://www.andestech.com/markets.php.

For more information about SEGGER development solutions, click https://www.segger.com/.

About Andes Technology Corporation
Andes Technology Corporation is a public listed company with well-established technology and teams to develop innovative high-performance/low-power 32/64-bit processor cores and associated development environment to serve worldwide rapidly growing embedded system applications. In 2018, Andes-Embedded SoCs reach an annual run rate of over 1 billion mark with over 3.5 billion total cumulative units.
To meet the demanding requirements of today’s electronic devices, Andes Technology delivers configurable software/hardware IP and scalable platforms to respond to customers’ needs for quality products and faster time-to-market. Its comprehensive processor offerings include a wide range of performance with efficient control, data processing, extensible and security capabilities to address the diversified embedded electronic devices, especially for connected, smart and green applications. Since 2017, Andes incorporated RISC-V technology into its AndeStar V5 architecture and released a series of performance-efficient 32/64-bit V5 processors, including N22, N25/NX25, N25F/NX25F and A25/AX25. The powerful tool for Andes Custom Extension (ACE) enables flexible Domain-Specific Acceleration (DSA) for V5 processors, and takes performance efficiency to the next level. 

For more information about Andes Technology, please visit http://www.andestech.com/

About SEGGER Microcontroller
SEGGER Microcontroller is a full-range supplier of software, hardware and development tools for embedded systems. The company offers support throughout the whole development process with affordable, high quality, flexible and easy-to-use tools and components.
SEGGER offers solutions for secure communication as well as data and product security, meeting the needs of the rapidly evolving IoT.
SEGGER was founded in 1992, is privately held, and is growing steadily. Headquartered in Germany, with US offices in the Boston area and Silicon Valley, as well as distributors in all continents, SEGGER offers its full product range worldwide.

For more information about SEGGER Microcontroller, please visit https://www.segger.com/

Continue ReadingAndes and SEGGER Partner to Deliver Professional Development Solutions for RISC-V

Andes Technology Corp. Targets Deeply Embedded Protocol Processing and Entry-level MCUs With the New N22, the Smallest RISC-V Core in its V5 Family

N22 Delivers up to 3.93 CoreMark/MHz, in as little as 15K Gates with Highly Flexible Interfaces and Debug Support

HSINCHU, TAIWAN–Andes Technology Corporation, a leading supplier of small, low-power, high performance 32-/64-bit embedded CPU cores, including a broad family of RISC-V processors, announces the new N22 32-bit RISC-V CPU core to target deeply embedded protocol processing such as high-speed communication and storage, and entry-level MCU applications such as small IoT and wearable devices. The highly configurable N22 is the smallest in the Andes RISC-V family offerings in just 15K gates with minimum useful configuration settings, and yet delivers over 750MHz at 28nm in the worst case. In addition, the N22 provides an impressive 3.93 CoreMark/MHz, highly flexible system and memory interfaces and vector interrupt controller. In addition, a low pin count two-wire debug module can save SoC chip cost, and a pre-integrated MCU platform with frequently used peripherals can help speedup construction of various SoCs.

“CPU cores to serve today’s high-speed communications and storage markets must be able to do more than run at a high data rate,” declares Andes Technology President Frankwell Jyh-Ming Lin. “The protocol SoCs serving these markets are highly complex to meet widely diverse applications.  As a result, SoCs need to offer not only high bandwidth processing to accommodate the data rate, but also software based flexibility when new standards and protocols are adopted by the industry standards groups in these markets.  Furthermore, silicon costs dictate ultra-small gate counts to serve anywhere within the SoC design, especially when dozens of instances are needed. The N22’s high performance and compact design makes it very suitable to process on-the-fly protocol packets at high data-rate. ”

“The N22 is a 2-stage pipeline core with small gate count which can fit in entry-level MCU applications such as small IoT and wearable devices. It supports 16 or 32 GPRs (general purpose registers), optional branch prediction, hardware multiplier and divider, vector Interrupt Controller, and Andes V5 extensions,” stated CTO and Senior Vice President, Dr. Charlie Hong-Men Su.  “In addition to Andes’ professional development environment, the N22’s RISC-V RV32IMAC or RV32EMAC ISA compatibility opens up the full suite of compiler, debugger, ICE/trace probe tools from RISC-V Foundation’s rich ecosystem. The N22 leverages Andes’ long track record of CPU development, including the high-volume N7/N8 families with efficient short pipelines and many useful features such as StackSafe™ for hardware stack protection, CoDense™ for code size compression, and PowerBrake for power management.  Moreover, the new N22 will be available with a rich set of system level configuration options such as Physical Memory Protection (PMP), Platform-Level Interrupt Controller (PLIC), cache and local memories, private bus interface, and fast IO interface with 0-cycle latency.” 

Price and Availability 
The N22 pricing will be consistent with current Andes licensing and royalty business model.  The core will be available in February, 2019 for initial customer delivery.

Continue ReadingAndes Technology Corp. Targets Deeply Embedded Protocol Processing and Entry-level MCUs With the New N22, the Smallest RISC-V Core in its V5 Family

Andes Technology Records 1 Billion SoC Shipments in 2018 Based on Its CPU IP and 3.5 Billion Since Inception

HSINCHU, TAIWAN – February 14, 2019 – As the first public listed CPU IP company in Asia, specializing in low-power, high-performance 32/64-bit processor IP cores and SoC platform, Andes Technology Corporation (TWSE:6533) announced an extraordinary record of 1 billion annual SoC shipments containing its CPU IP in 2018. The cumulative SoC shipments surpassed 3.5 billion. Applications in which Andes CPU IP performs include AI and machine learning, audio, Bluetooth, gaming, GPS, MCU, sensor fusion, SSD controllers, touch screen and TDDI controllers, USB 3.0 storage, voice recognition, Wi-Fi, and wireless charger.

Andes President, Frankwell Lin declared, “The shipments of SoC embedded with Andes CPU cores have been experiencing remarkable growth from 430 million in 2016 to 590 million in 2017 and further to 1 billion in 2018 at an annual growth rates of 37% and 69%, respectively. This data demonstrate that Andes’ product development and service practice is solid and mature, and our comprehensive solutions and competitive technologies enable customers to enter their market with strong product offerings. Andes continues to focus on processor IP development to bring more and better products and solutions to market. As more and more customers start mass production of their SoCs, we believe the SoC shipment volumes and associated royalties of Andes IP will continue growing at the accelerating rate demonstrated up to now.”

“With the SoC challenges driven by ever-increasing and diversified product requirements in the market, Andes aims to become our customers’ ‘Trusted Computing Expert’ to help tackle their computing needs. We will continue leveraging our 13 years of experience in developing and supporting our own ISA to enhance our new V5 RISC-V processor series.  In the process, we will maintain compliance with the emerging open RISC-V architecture, while leading the RISC-V solution trend to become a world-class processor IP supplier!” President Lin said, “Going forward, Andes will actively assist customers in developing products in the emerging markets of AIoT, AR/VR, automotive, machine/deep learning, robotics, etc.

Dr. Charlie Su, Andes CTO and Senior Vice President, also stated, “Driving innovations is the motto of Andes R&D teams and the key to maintaining Andes products’ competitive edge. In addition to expertise in processor technologies, Andes continues to accumulate a rich, growing body of experience from providing technical support to over 150 customers. Expertise and experience are the reasons customers choose Andes over competitors. Andes Custom Extension™ (ACE) is a good example. Its powerful features allow SoC design engineers, not familiar with processor pipeline design, to easily add customized instructions to Andes processors to improve the performance dramatically in a short time. For ACE customers, the COPILOT tool not only generates RTL and toolchains, it can also generate verification patterns and cross-checking environment to greatly simplify designers’ tasks to verify the correctness of their instruction designs.”

During 2018, Andes Technology not only continued its support of V3 processors, it also introduced four new 32/64-bit V5 (RISC-V) processors, N25F/NX25F with floating point support and A25/AX25 for Linux applications, to accompany the fast-and-compact N25/NX25 for high-speed control tasks. Andes V5 processors have been licensed to many customers for applications in AI, communication, FPGA, security and storage. In 2019, Andes Technology plans new product line releases to address a wider range of applications. It will continue its high level of professional technical support to help customers create the most competitive products in shorter time.

For more information on Andes Technology and its products of low-power, high-performance 32/64-bit CPU IP cores, please visit www.andestech.com or contact sales@andestech.com.

Continue ReadingAndes Technology Records 1 Billion SoC Shipments in 2018 Based on Its CPU IP and 3.5 Billion Since Inception