Flex Logix Technologies, Inc., the leading supplier of reconfigurable computing solutions, architecture and software, and CEVA, Inc., the leading licensor of wireless connectivity and smart sensing technologies and integrated IP solutions, have announced today the world’s first successful silicon implementation using Flex Logix’s EFLX embedded FPGA (eFPGA) connected to a CEVA-X2 DSP instruction extension interface. Enabling flexible and changeable instruction sets to meet demanding and changing processing workloads, the ASIC, known as SOC2, was designed and taped out in a TSMC 16 nm technology by Bar-Ilan University SoC Lab, as part of the HiPer Consortium, backed by the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA).
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“The ability to add custom instructions to minimize power and maximize performance efficiency of embedded processors has been around for decades,” said Andy Jaros, VP of Sales and Marketing for Flex Logix’s eFPGA IP. “The ISA extension capability works great for targeted applications, but it can be a costly solution when the application changes or new use cases need different instructions requiring a new chip to be developed. By working with CEVA and the HiPer Consortium, the SOC2 proves that reconfigurable computing is here with a DSP Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) that can be adapted to different workloads with custom hard-wired instructions that can be changed at any time in the future.”
“Being part of the HiPer Consortium, we were excited to work with Bar-Ilan University SoC Lab team and Flex Logix to test out new capabilities for the CEVA-X2 DSP that had never been tried before,” said Erez Bar-Niv, CEVA’s Chief Technology Officer. “The SOC2 contains two processing clusters, each containing two CEVA-X2 DSP cores and EFLX eFPGA for programming and executing DSP instructions extensions, connected using the CEVA-Xtend mechanism. Flex Logix and CEVA’s mutual customers can now confidently utilize custom instructions to extract more value from their ASIC by being able to target different DSP applications on top of communication and sound with a customizable ISA post manufacturing.”