AndesCore™ Ultra Low-Power, High Performance N705 CPU Core Wins Design Socket In Sino Wealth Electronic’s New Bluetooth Low Energy Chip Design

Andes Technology Corporation’s N705 Won Over Competitive Alternative
By Providing 42 Percent Better DMIPS/mW Performance Efficiency

HSINCHU, TAIWAN– Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based supplier of small, low-power, high performance 32-bit embedded CPU cores, today announced that Sino Wealth Electronic, a Shanghai Informatization Office (SIO) top hi-tech enterprise for 11 years, has designed the AndesCore N705 CPU into their low energy Bluetooth chip. Andes won the design by providing 42 percent better DMIPS/mW performance efficiency over its major competitor for the business.

“Our IoT SoC customer required a reliable, small and low power Bluetooth solution,” said Zhisheng Guo Deputy General Manager Sino Wealth Electronic. “We have licensed several Andes cores for our chip designs because they provide the better solution over competitive alternatives. During our product development, Andes provided the immediate support our engineers needed to complete their designs within our tight project windows. Thanks to the contribution of Andes’ and our other supply chain partners, our BLE chip is now shipping in mass production.”

“We are thrilled to have Sino Wealth Electronic as a long standing Andes customer,” said Charlie Hong-Men Su CTO and Senior Vice President of R&D and Technical Marketing. “Sino Wealth has the reputation as one of the first IC design enterprises recognized by Shanghai Informatization Office (SIO) as a Shanghai hi-tech enterprise and has maintained the title for the past 11 years. As a partner, Andes has a responsibility to provide not only a superior CPU core to solve their design problem, but to provide them the service and support to help them maintain their high reputation.”


About AndesCore N705

The N7’s ultra-low power consumption and small size was created for performance constrained SoC designs, such as controllers for network connectivity applications including low energy Bluetooth in IoT (Internet-of-Things), storage, and sensors. The N7’s features the latest AndeStar™ V3m architecture and a 2-stage pipeline that helps deliver an impressive 168 DMIPS/mW, >40% better than competitive products. Its FlashFetch technology can boost performance of slow flash memory without consuming added power. The AndesCore™ N7 can be as small as 12K gates. This makes it an ideal alternative to the 8051 and other 8-bit processor cores, while delivering the benefits of performance-efficiency, programmability and compact code size of a 32-bit processor solution.


About Andes

Andes Technology Corporation was founded in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan in 2005 to develop innovative high-performance/low-power 32-bit processor cores and associated development environment to serve worldwide rapidly growing embedded system applications. The company delivers the best super low power CPU cores with integrated development environment and associated software and hardware solutions for efficient SoC design.
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. Andes Technology’s comprehensive CPU includes entry-level, mid-range, high-end, extensible and security families to address the full range of embedded electronics products, especially for connected, smart and green applications.


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

Continue ReadingAndesCore™ Ultra Low-Power, High Performance N705 CPU Core Wins Design Socket In Sino Wealth Electronic’s New Bluetooth Low Energy Chip Design

ASolid Adopts AndesCore™ N9 for its AS2726 eMMC Controller to Deliver Competitive Market Advantage

Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based supplier of small gate count, low-power and high performance 32-bit embedded CPU cores, announced that ASolid Technology Co., Ltd., the leading NAND flash controller provider based in Hsinchu, Taiwan, has adopted the AndesCore™ N9 for its AS2726 eMMC chip. The Andes 32-bit CPU core enables the ASolid AS2726 eMMC chip to achieve a cost-effective and low power consumption flash controller solution, which allows ASolid a significant competitive advantage in the fast growing eMMC market.

“Our comprehensive solutions have enabled customers to realize enriched and stable performance enhancement in their products.” said Andy Yen, Senior Vice President of ASolid Technology. “For example, our AS2726 controller supports eMMC4.5, eMMC5.01 and eMMC5.1. Its high-performance asynchronous mode operation can reach up to 50MB/s and an even faster synchronous mode operation of 400MB/s. With its small footprint and low-power competitive advantage, the AS2726 provides an excellent product with high cost-performance value. During our engagement, Andes exceeded our expectation in product and service. The core provides savings on area, power and better performance compared to competitive CPU offerings performing the same operations. We achieved a technical advantage with Andes’ 32-bit RISC CPU core.”

“Andes is honored to provide our N9 CPU core to ASoild and to be their partner,” said Frankwell Lin, President of Andes Technology Corporation. “The N9 delivers high performance in a small gate count and on a low power budget. Andes will constantly provide high-quality customer service and precise technical support to maximize benefits for our customers.”

About the eMMC Market
The eMMC is an ideal flash storage solution for today’s mobile devices such as smart phones, digital cameras, multi-media, wearable devices, and tablets. According to the Global Industry Analysts, “The global market for eMMC is expected to reach 2.1 billion units by 2020, driven by the rapid growth in mobile device sales and robust increase in data consumption on mobile devices.”

About the N9
The AndesCore N9 Family of CPU cores implement v3, the AndeStar™ patented 32-bit RISC-style CPU architecture. The designer can configure certain parameters to adjust the CPU’s size, power, and performance. For example, the N9 core can be configured with 16 or 32 general registers, two or three read ports on the register file, one or two write ports, a fast or a small multiplier, a 24-bit or 32-bit address space, and different bus (APB, AHB, AHB-Lite, AXI) interfaces to connect to the rest of the system.

About ASolid Technology Co., Ltd. 
ASolid Technology Co., Ltd. is a NAND flash controller provider and the top leaders in the flash controller market. ASolid’s product lines cover a wide range of SD/microSD controller and USB flash drive controller solutions, combined with the latest Wear-Leveling Algorithm, ECC and Bad Block Management technologies. For more information about ASolid Technology, please visit http://www.asolid-tek.com/

About Andes Technology Corporation
Andes Technology Corporation was founded in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan in 2005 to develop innovative high-performance/low-power 32-bit processor cores and associated development environment to serve worldwide rapidly growing embedded system applications. The company delivers the best super low power CPU cores with integrated development environment and associated software and hardware solutions for efficient SoC design

Continue ReadingASolid Adopts AndesCore™ N9 for its AS2726 eMMC Controller to Deliver Competitive Market Advantage

Weltrend Adopts AndesCore™ in WT8893 Around View Monitor Video Processor Shipping in a Major Sports Utility Vehicle

Andes Solution Enables Weltrend WT8893 a More Cost Effective, Lower Power Alternative to DSP-Based Around View Monitor Designs

【Hsinchu, Taiwan.】 Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based suppliers of small, low-power, high performance 32-bit embedded CPU cores, announced Weltrend Semiconductor, Inc. a leading fabless semiconductor company based in Hsinchu, Taiwan adopted AndesCore for their WT8893 Around-View Monitor (AVM) chip. The Andes 32-bit CPU core enables the Weltrend WT8893 AVM chip a more cost-effective, lower power alternative to the DSP core typically found in other AVM chip designs—a competitive advantage in a fast growing AVM processor market.

“The competition to win designs in advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) with major automotive electronics system supplier is intense and requires a technical edge,” said Chao-Chee Ku, Ph.D., Senior Director of Product Marketing of Weltrend Semiconductor. “Our WT8893, for example, includes CVBS (color, video, blanking and sync) input from four channel video decoders, four individual contrast/brightness adjustment function, input image position adjustment function to correct the camera assembling error, video image processing, fisheye correction, perspective adjustment, capability to combine front/rear/left/right four images to top view with adjustable image size and boundary fusion processing, as well as other functions. Andes exceeded our expectation in product and service. The core provides savings on area, power and better performance compared to the competitive offerings based on a digital signal processor to perform the same operations. We achieved a technical advantage with Andes’ 32-bit RISC CPU core.”

“From our founding, Andes Technology has architected its AndesCore processors based on input from customers, including Weltrend Semiconductor, a customer since 2009,” said Frankwell Lin, President of Andes. “Our synthesizable general purpose 32-bit embedded processor core N1337 used in WT8893 reflects this response to customer requirements. It comes with a coprocessor interface for FPU unit and software management multi-core instructions and with variety of configuration options including MMU, cache and local memory. It can be configured for performance sensitive applications running embedded Linux or other advanced operating systems. It can also be configured with a memory protection unit (MPU) for real-time operating system (RTOS) applications.”

Growing Market for ADAS 
In an article from Electronics360, “Outsiders’ Make Inroads in ADAS Market,” Akhilesh Kona, analyst for automotive semiconductors at Englewood, Colo. market research firm IHS, Inc. stated. “Chipmakers are developing solutions that will cut down the costs of semiconductor components for mass market volume.” As a result, the article noted that ADAS features such as around-view cameras for self-parking, once offered as a luxury vehicle option, are rapidly becoming standard in most cars across the globe. With this widespread adoption, IHS forecasts ADAS revenue from semiconductors and sensors will reach $4.0 billion by 2020. ADAS chip and sensor revenue was forecasted to grow to $1.9 billion in 2015, up from $1.6 billion in 2014.

About Weltrend Semiconductor 
Founded in 1989 in the “Silicon Valley of Taiwan”, the Science-Based Industrial Park (SBIP) in Hsinchu, Weltrend (TAIEX: 2436) is a leading fabless semiconductor company, also known as IC design house, specializing in the planning, design, testing, application development and distribution of mixed-signal/digital IC products across multiple applications. 
For more information about Weltrend Semiconductor, please visit http://www.weltrend.com

Continue ReadingWeltrend Adopts AndesCore™ in WT8893 Around View Monitor Video Processor Shipping in a Major Sports Utility Vehicle

Andes Technology Corporation Announces a Design Win in ITE Tech. Inc. IT835X Series Sensor Hub Chips Targeting the High Growth Wearable & IoT Market

Andes N801 CPU Core Executes ITE’s Sensor Fusion Algorithm for Accelerometer, Gyroscope, and Magnetometer to Greatly Reduce Wearable Power Consumption

【Hsinchu, Taiwan.】 Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based suppliers of small, low-power, high performance 32-bit embedded CPU cores, announced that its N801 CPU core has been designed into the IT835X sensor hub chip from ITE Tech. Inc. based in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The Andes N801 32-bit CPU core executes ITE’s sensor fusion algorithm for accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer-core elements found in most wearable devices. Andes N801’s best in class MIPS/mW specification enables the IT835X to achieve reduced power consumption while providing the high performance the sensor fusion algorithm demands.

“We’re very proud of our sensor hub system-on-chip (SoC),” stated Mr. Lawrence Liu, General Manager-Business Division at ITE Tech. Inc. “Soon after we launched the chip, it won several OEMs’ design for mobile device application. Our choice of the Andes N8 CPU core with its small gate count and superior MIPS-per-mWatt performance helps make the IT835X sensor hub chip a competitive offering to win customers in the fast growing sensor hub market. With the Andes N8 32-bit MCU, the IT835X operates independently to integrate sensing information and significantly reduces the burden on the system CPU to achieve the low-power requirements of smartphones, tablets and wearable devices.”

“We are extremely pleased that ITE Tech chose the N801 as the central processor in their IT835X sensor hub chip,” said Al Kuo-Chi Lin, Vice President of Andes Technology Corp. “Sensor hubs are key elements in wearable electronics to help reduce the applications processor’s load. The AndesCore™ series offer many features for wearable electronics. They include CoDense™ for very compact code size; StackSafe for automatic detection of stack overflow; PowerBrake for a purely digital way to scale frequency and power without a clock divider; FastWakeUp for Automatic CPU state save/restore for fast power-down/power-up; and FlashFetch, which is separate IP to speed up internal Flash and allow execute-in-place external Flash support. Andes Custom Extension (ACE) provides programmable acceleration and energy reduction through the use of custom instructions.”

Wearable Application
In the paper “ZOE: A Cloud-less Dialog-enabled Continuous Sensing Wearable Exploiting Heterogeneous Computation,” Nicholas D. Lane, et al detail a match-box sized lapel-worn sensor that continuously senses data to determine three major variables: Personal Sensing-physical activity, transport (car, train, etc.), and stress; Social Sensing-conversations with others; and Place Sensing-work or home. Zoe is built around three processors: an applications processor running the algorithms that analyze data from the accelerometer and gyroscope sensor hub (an IT835X with Andes N8) that the one applications processor. High Growth Wearable Market According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 27.4 million units during the 2015 holiday quarter, besting 4Q14 levels by 126.9 percent. For the full year, vendors shipped a total of 78.1 million units, up a strong 171.6 percent over 2014. “Triple-digit growth highlights growing interest in the wearables market from both end-users and vendors,” noted Ramon Llamas, Research Manager for IDC’s Wearables team. “It shows that wearables are not just for the technophiles and early adopters; wearables can exist and are welcome in the mass market. And since wearables have yet to fully penetrate the mass market, there is still plenty of room for growth in multiple vectors: new vendors, form factors, applications, and use cases. This will help propel the market further.”

About ITE Tech. Inc. 
ITE Tech. Inc. (abbreviated as ITE) is a professional fabless IC design house, established in 1996 and headquartered in Hsinchu Science Park, Taiwan. ITE is well known as the global leader in Super I/O as well as Keyboard and Embedded Controller technology. The market share of ITE’s Super I/O products, adopted by many well-known PC manufactures, has been over 40 percent worldwide. Following steady growth, ITE is gradually expanding its product line and technology expertise. Currently ITE employs many highly qualified engineers specializing in software/hardware development on PC/NB Controller, Digital TV Receiver Controller, Multimedia Controller, and Analog IC as well as marketing talents. After many years of technology integration, ITE has developed much advanced Silicon Intellectual Property (SIP) and highly integrated system software/hardware technology. Through the combination of diverse products, a total solution can be provided to customers by the concept of system platform. Moreover, ITE strategically cooperates with globally leading suppliers to enhance final product development and speed the Time-to-Market schedule. After growing with customers, ITE provides high quality products to customers thereby creating a win-win situation for both. For more information about ITE Technology, Inc., please visit http://www.ite.com.tw/en/. 

Continue ReadingAndes Technology Corporation Announces a Design Win in ITE Tech. Inc. IT835X Series Sensor Hub Chips Targeting the High Growth Wearable & IoT Market

Andes Technology Corporation Announces Quick-Start Design Package That Significantly Reduces Time to Market of SoC Designs

Solution Reduces the Time Consuming and Error Prone Task of Creating and Verifying Glue Logic to Integrate Disparate Elements of a SoC Design

【Hsinchu, Taiwan.】 Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based supplier of small, low-power, high performance 32-bit embedded CPU cores, today announced the Quick-Start Design Package, a complete solution that significantly reduces time to market for SoC designs. The package includes the new AndesCore™ N650 CPU IP, AndeShape™ AE100 Platform IP, and AndeSight™ IDE software development environment. The new compact N650 CPU provides the performance-efficiency needed for entry-level SoC, and the new Platform IP offers several highly-optimized peripherals and the bus fabric that SoCs require to surround and enable customer logic. By pre-integrating and pre-verifying processor, fabric, and peripherals, the package jump-starts customer’s SoC projects with a solid foundation and reduces custom glue logic design teams need to create. Instead of hardwired control logic, customers can use software created with AndeSight™ IDE to debug the SoC and control the various peripherals.

“Time-to-market is a major concern for every SoC design and one task that slows a design progress is writing RTL code for developing standard IP blocks, integrating them, and spending 70 percent additional effort in verification,” said Frankwell Jyh-Ming Lin, President of Andes Technology Corp. “The Quick-Start Design Package provides an optimized plug and play solution that saves effort developing common functions that are not providing any significant added value to their final design. CPU based system using software to control the peripheral elements reduces risk for SoC designs by eliminating the need to hardwire everything.”

“By running control software on the new Andes N650 CPU IP, design teams reduce their risk considerably and shorten their silicon development schedule,” said Charlie Hong-Men Su, Ph.D., Andes Technology CTO and Senior Vice President of R&D. “For example, it’s a simple software revision to change the configuration of PCIe, DDR boot sequence, and other functions post-silicon. In addition to facilitating software development and optimization, the AndeSight™ IDE allows access to the entire system for chip-level debugging through the JTAG interface. By re-using the production-quality processor and peripheral controllers, and extensible bus fabric, the Quick-Start Design Packagereduces design teams’ risk of a silicon respin.”

About the Quick-Start Design Package Solution
The individual elements of the Quick-Start Design Package—new AndesCore™ N650 CPU IP, AndeShape™ AE100 Platform IP, and AndeSight™ IDE software development environment—come with their own unique features. The new N650 CPU core is a 3-stage pipeline architecture with 16 general-purpose registers and multiply and divide instructions. The core delivers 25 percent better DMIPS/MHz performance and 40 percent better DMIPS/mW power efficiency than its competitive counterpart in the TSMC 90LP process.

The N650 CPU IP core has memory mapped I/O, a 32-bit wide AHB-Lite bus, up to 32 vectored interrupts, 4-priority nested interrupts, and power management instructions—essential for power sensitive designs. The core comes with Embedded Debug Module, 2-wire Serial Debug Port and up to 8 breakpoints/watchpoints.

The new AE100 Platform IP features a new AHB Configurable Fabric with 24-bit address width and 32-bit data width. It supports up to 8 AHB masters, up to 30 AHB slaves and up to 31 APB slaves. Components of the fabric include AHB-Lite master multiplexer, AHB-Lite decoder and AHB-to-APB bridge. Other peripherals included are a Low-latency RAM Bridge, general purpose I/O (GPIO), watchdog timer, programmable interval timer and UART.

The AndeSight Eclipse-based IDE provides a fully functional Andes C and C++ integrated development environment that enables managed build system. It comes with a profiler, code coverage, code size analysis, chip profile, in-system programming, and advanced debugging. The tool chain includes compiler, assembler, linker, loader, libraries, and debugger. Also provided are a core simulator, pre-defined models of AndeShape™ SoC platform, and external plugin APIs.

Availability
The Quick-Start Design Package will be available the third quarter of this year. The Andes Quick-Start license includes the following:

  • AndesCore™ N650 CPU IP
  • AndeShape™AE100 Platform IP
  • AndeSight™ IDE Software Development Environment

Also available is either a full-featured ADP-XC7 or a compact Corvette F1 (Arduino-Compatible) optional development board along with Andes High-value service and support.

Continue ReadingAndes Technology Corporation Announces Quick-Start Design Package That Significantly Reduces Time to Market of SoC Designs

Andes Technology Corporation and Acer BYOC™ Announce Inter-Platform Support on Internet-of-Things Cloud Solutions for SoC Design

Andes Technology and Acer BYOC’s Efforts Will Enable IoT SoC Designers to Empower Their Products with Cloud Computing Capabilities Through Andes’ Knect.me™ Ecosystem

【Hsinchu, Taiwan】Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based supplier of small, low-power, high performance 32-bit embedded CPU cores, and Acer BYOC™ (Build Your Own Cloud™) today announced plans to support each other’s Internet-of-Things cloud service solutions for SoC Design. Andes and Acer BYOC will each develop technology offerings that will enable SoC engineering design teams to build IoT SoCs with Acer cloud services using Andes Knect.me ecosystem resources. Andes will support Acer BYOC’s open platform and help expand Internet-of-Beings cloud ecosystem to the level of IC and SoC design. Acer BYOC will grow the vertical coverage of Andes’ CPU IP and IoT Knect.me ecosystem on their expanding cloud service platform.

“Both Acer and Andes offer complementing IoT solutions to the global market,” said Maverick Shih, President of BYOC Business Group at Acer Inc. “By offering inter-platform compatibility, we hope to create a mutually beneficial ecosystem for our joint customers.”
 “We admire how Acer has studied the progress of the IoT market trend over the long-term and devoted itself early on to building up cloud technology,” Frankwell Jyh-Ming Lin, President of Andes Technology Corporation, stated. “Our collaboration with Acer BYOC will enable Andes customers that design hardware and develop software for IoT SoCs the convenience of obtaining cloud service solutions plus underlying building blocks from Knect.me, our IoT ecosystem providing open-source and commercial solutions for modern connected devices based on the highly performance-efficient AndesCore™ processors. Customers will derive great benefit through this technology and business relationship.”

Cloud Service Platform and IoT Computing
Emerging services and innovative applications are raised by the development of ubiquitous computing and IoT devices. Equipped with sensing, connectivity, and intelligence, connected IoT devices change the computing paradigm. Legacy resources, such as storage and computation, are migrating from computing devices to the cloud for emerging networked applications. In addition to storage capacity and computing power, SoC designers for IoT applications also face the daunting task of integrating silicon intellectual property and software stacks as well as easy access to cloud services to complete real world usages of the IoT computing. The example of a fitness wearable illustrates how the cloud becomes a component of an SoC design. The SoC controls an intelligent sensor, but the cloud provides the sensor output.

The challenge is to build both device and service infrastructure. The inter-platform support of Andes and Acer BYOC combines the market proven elite software stack and hardware platform from Andes Knect.me ecosystem with the cloud service open platform from Acer BYOC. The Acer BYOC platform provides modular services such as music, file storages, media and document applications, and it also allows developers to rapidly bring new and innovative applications to IoT devices. By introducing such a flexible cloud platform on top of the rich device hardware-software framework, Andes and Acer BYOC enable developers to quickly bring smart connected applications to reality.

Continue ReadingAndes Technology Corporation and Acer BYOC™ Announce Inter-Platform Support on Internet-of-Things Cloud Solutions for SoC Design

Andes Technology Corporation Achieves 10,000 Installations of Its AndeSight™ Integrated Development Environment

Demonstrates Growing Market Adoption of Andes Powerful Cores which Minimize Manufacturing Costs, Reduce Power Requirements and Speed Time to Market

【Hsinchu, Taiwan】 Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based supplier of small, low-power, high performance 32-bit embedded CPU cores, today announced that it has achieved 10,000 installations globally of its AndeSight™ Eclipse-based integrated development environment (IDE). The powerful AndeSight IDE, which supports the entire range of AndesCore™ embedded CPU IP cores, enables Andes Technology’s customers to achieve minimum code size as well as highly reliable software code, while reducing customers’ time to market.

“AndeSight, with its complete and highly efficient features, has helped our customers to achieve cumulative shipments of over 1.4 billion SoCs,” stated Andes Technology Corporation President, Frankwell Jyh-Ming Lin. “This volume testifies to both the quality and adoption of AndeSight. Since AndeSight’s introduction, Andes Technology has continuously incorporated customers’ experiences, simplified development flow, and included new technology development, to provide superior software tool to the market. In the future, Andes Technology will continually enhance AndeSight to improve ease of use; to provide broad support of hardware, software, and system layers; and to boost higher efficiency and optimized code. In this way we will enable our customers to provide an even better product and service.”

“AndeSight implements a highly efficient compiler,” stated Charlie Su, Ph.D. Andes Technology Corporation CTO and Senior Vice President of R&D. “Across numerous applications, customers have found that our compiled code delivers best-in-class performance and compactness. Besides program development, code upgrading, and debugging, AndeSight also provides numerous advanced features. These include code coverage analysis, function profiling, performance meter, and a simple interface for customers to hook up their SoC-dependent GUI. With its rich features and friendly user interface, AndeSight has gained widespread user adoption. Today’s announcement of AndeSight reaching a 10,000-installation represents AndeSight has been used by more than 30,000 engineers, this milestone shows strong market endorsement of the stability and popularity of AndeSight. AndeSight serves both IC design houses and system companies, while enabling the latter to facilitate their market development.”

About AndeSight
Andes Technology began offering AndeSight in 2007. In 2015, the company released the latest AndeSight version 2.1.0, which includes four editions: STD, MCU, RDS and Lite. The STD edition supports the entire series of Andes Technology CPUs with functionality designed for high-end applications in the global SoC market. The STD edition’s Linux debugging features are well suited to the AndesCore D10, N10, and N13 cores. The MCU edition is designed for microcontroller development. It supports AndesCore N7, N8, E8, S8 and N9. The RDS edition is based on MCU edition but targeted at software developers at downstream customers of Andes Technology’s IC design company customers.

The Lite edition is a compact and free IDE targeting IoT and wearable applications. It can be downloaded from the knect.me™ website and is ideal for software evaluation. In addition, Andes Technology also collaborates with academia to provide AndeSight for uses in embedded system training courses, IoT applications, and SoC system. Through this collaboration program, Andes Technology aims to engender more software developers familiar with the AndeSight IDE and the AndesCore CPU families.

Continue ReadingAndes Technology Corporation Achieves 10,000 Installations of Its AndeSight™ Integrated Development Environment

Wave Semiconductor Selects Andes Technology for Embedded Core Wave to use N9 5-stage pipeline CPU Core

Andes’ Ease of SoC IP Integration, High Performance and Low Power Consumption 
All in a Compact Silicon Footprint Contributed to Winning the Business

【 San Jose, Calif.】– November 11, 2015 – Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based suppliers of small, low-power, high performance 32-bit embedded CPU cores, today announced that Wave Semiconductor (www.wavesemi.com) has licensed Andes low power, N9 32-bit, 5-stage pipeline CPU core and Andes AE210P peripherals for a new chip design. Wave selected the Andes core to provide boot–time configuration and continuous monitoring of Wave’s SoC operation. The ease of integrating the Andes N9 and peripherals into its larger SoC design, the native AXI4 support, high performance at low power consumption, and small silicon footprint contributed to Wave’s decision.

“We are pleased with our choice of the Andes N9 CPU core for our next SoC design,” said Richard Terrill, Vice President of Marketing at Wave Semiconductor. “We needed a small but powerful CPU to manage critical tasks at power-up boot and on-going observation of chip operation. The N9’s programming tools and support of the AXI bus interface fit our requirements nicely.  Its straightforward synthesis made for integration into our larger design and its small silicon footprint provided an added bonus.”

“Andes is thrilled that Wave Semiconductor chose our N9 CPU core for their new SoC design,” said Frankwell Lin, President of Andes Technology Corporation. “The N9 delivers high performance in a small gate count and on a low power budget. Its ability to provide low-latency vectored interrupt makes it very efficient for high performance real time monitoring. The N9’s ability to mix 16- and 32-bit instruction format enables compact code and the five-stage clock-gated pipeline contributes to the core’s 3.43 CoreMark/MHz performance, while its power management instructions conserve power.”

About Wave Semiconductor
Wave is a systems startup that has developed a low power, high-performance data flow computing platform to accelerate critical applications such as machine learning (CNN/DNN/AI), national/cyber security, unstructured search and big data analytics. Wave is developing a family of compute acceleration hardware ranging from OCP mezzanine to 1U appliances, all based on their proprietary Byte-Fabric™ programmable SOCs. By placing special emphasis on low-power computing, Wave offers best-in-class performance as measured in operations/Watt. The company is venture-backed (Tallwood and Southern Cross) and staffed with a cadre of industry veterans and entrepreneurs.
www.wavesemi.com

About Andes Technology Corporation
Andes Technology Corporation is a leader in developing high-performance/low-power 32-bit processors and its associated SoC platforms to serve the rapidly growing embedded system applications worldwide. The company’s broad and deep technical expertise in microprocessor, system architecture, operating system, software tool chain development, and SoC VLSI implementation enables designers to shorten their time-to-market with quality designs. In addition, Andes’ innovative configurable platform solution allows design teams to construct unique system architecture and hardware/software partitioning to achieve the optimal SoC.  For more information visit http://www.andestech.com.

 

Continue ReadingWave Semiconductor Selects Andes Technology for Embedded Core Wave to use N9 5-stage pipeline CPU Core

Andes Technology Corporation Launches New DSP+CPU Core Offering 134 Percent Higher Performance than Competing Alternatives for Low-Power SoC Designs

AndesCore™ D1088 CPU+DSP Combination Delivers Better Performance, Using Less Power with Half the Code Size of Competitive Offerings

【HSINCHU, Taiwan】Andes Technology Corporation, the leading Asia-based supplier of high-volume, low-power 32-bit embedded CPU cores, today announced the D1088, a 5-stage pipeline processor with integrated DSP offering 130 SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) instructions. When implemented in a 90nm low power process, the D1088 delivers 588 DMIPS, 134% higher than competing offerings. Measured using the popular Whetstone floating-point benchmark, the D1088 achieves 92% better performance. When running popular and comprehensive (over 200) DSP libraries, the D1088 is 116% faster with half the code size. Even with the above advantages, the D1088 still achieves smaller die area and less power per MHz than competing offerings.

“We’re proud of the results achieved with the D1088 DSP+CPU core,” said Dr. Charlie Su, Chief Technology Officer and Senior VP of R&D at Andes Technology Corporation. “With the increasing numbers of designs performing signal processing for smart sensors, image processing, motion detection, audio and video, the D1088 will provide a wide range of benefits, including better compute performance and power savings, as well as additional functionality. The D1088 easily interfaces with both AHB and AXI bus for simplified use in SOC devices. It comes with an optional memory management unit to support the Linux OS and an optional memory protection unit to support real time operating systems (RTOS).”

About the D1088
Tightly integrated Integer and DSP processor architectures are not new, but most were designed for applications where power was not as much a constraint as it is today. The new D1088 was designed with low power in mind. It contains functionality to enhance efficiency and reduce application code size to lower both power and cost. For example, to significantly boost the computational efficiency in matrix, filtering, Fourier Transform, and statistics functions, it can execute 4-way 8-bit, or 2-way 16-bit SIMD instructions in a single-cycle latency. In addition, for multimedia applications, the D1088 also supports 64-bit add, subtract, and multiply mixed computation.
For voice application, the D1088 offers left shift, right rounding and shift, most significant word, 32×32 multiply and specially designed 32-bit instructions to replace the lengthy 64-bit computation. To reduce code size and increase efficiency, the D1088 provides a Zero Overhead Loop instruction to offload loop branching.  To enhance parallel computational capacity, the D1088 provides left and right shift, minimum, maximum, and absolute value, besides traditional SIMD instructions such as add, subtract, and multiply.

Availability
D1088 is available immediately for customer uses and is fully supported by AndesSight™ Integrated Development Environment (IDE) tool chain.

Continue ReadingAndes Technology Corporation Launches New DSP+CPU Core Offering 134 Percent Higher Performance than Competing Alternatives for Low-Power SoC Designs

Zinitix BT541 Touch Screen Controller Uses Andes N968A

Fabless chip giant Zinitix, based in Yongin, South Korea, has licensed the AndesCore N968A-S CPU IP for its Progressive Capacitive(PCAP)Touch Screen Controller BT541.

Zinitix BT541 leverages the AndesCore N968A’s high performance and small gate count to provide the advanced PCAP functionality found in today’s smart phone touch panel controllers: multi-touch capability, gesture recognition, and touch accuracy. The Zinitix BT541 has been incorporated into the worldwide mobile phone industry supply chain.
According to HIS Inc., the capacitive touch controller IC market is forecast to double in size to $2.8 billion in 2017, from $1.4 billion in 2012, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 14.6 percent during the period.

The El Segundo, Calif. based market research firm declares capacitive touch technology is leading the growth.” In the past eight years, it has been steadily advancing in many areas including touch panel structure, its materials, and the manufacturing process. Along with this, the market for touch controller lCs, one of the key components that determine the touch screen panel’s performance, has also experienced growth.”

＂We are thrilled that Zinitix selected Andes from among our competitors for their BT541 fourth generation capacitive touch screen controller,＂ said Frankwell Lin, President of Andes. ” We look forward to continue enabling Zinitix to achieve their goal of becoming a global system IC leader. Korea is one of the most important markets for Andes.

In the future, Andes will aggressively promote its entire range of processors, the N7, N8, N9, N10, and N13, to provide SoC designers in Korea a wider selection of processor cores.＂

AndesCore N968A contributes to the cost/performance advantage of Zinitix’s BT541 to enable its success in the highly competitive PCAP touch screen market. Geoff Walker, Senior Touch Technologist, Intel Corp. places Zinitix in the top 15 PCAP controller suppliers worldwide.(＂Fundamentals of projected-Capacitive Touch Technoligy,＂ p.55)the N968A AndeStar™ V3 instruction set architecture adds 38 instructions to achieve superior system performance, minimum code size, and the lowest power consumption among competitive alternatives.

Zinitix Co., Ltd. Aims To Be the Global System IC Leader
Zinitix Co.is a fabless semiconductor enterprise specializing in developing world class system integrated circuits began in business nearly 20 years ago.

Since its founding, Zinitix has been invested heavily in innovative research and development. Today, Zinitix is high volume production of a wide variety of system ICs; touch controller ICs, auto focus driver ICs, haptic driver ICs, and motor driver ICs. Designed into smart phones, tablet PCs, laptop PCs, home appliances, and automotive applications, Zinitix products provide customers and markets epoch-making technology such as 1-layer touch and one chip auto-focus. Through creative R&D and leading technology, Zinitix’s Goal is become a global system IC leader providing the best products and services. For more information about Zinitix Co., Ltd, please visit http://www.Zinitix.com/eng/main/main.php

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