CEVA-X DSP Architecture Powers Next-Generation 3G Multimedia Phones

12/9/2003 - CEVA, Inc., (NASDAQ: CEVA; LSE: CVA), the leading licensor of Digital Signal Processor (DSP) cores and integrated applications to the semiconductor industry, announced the release of a pioneering new DSP architecture called CEVA-X that offers best-in-class performance, scalability and lowest cost-of-development in DSP deployment. The first implementation of the CEVA-X architecture, the CEVA-X1620, is a dual MAC 16-bit fixed point DSP that has already been licensed to one of the world's top cellular companies to power their next generation 3G multimedia phones.

"The DSP market is growing at a rate of 25% annually, and CEVA has positioned itself to capture an increased share of the market by delivering an architecture that hits new levels of performance, power efficiency and scalability," said Will Strauss, President of Forward Concepts, a leading electronics market research firm. "The ability of CEVA-X licensees to deploy code-compatible cores to each market's particular characteristics is impressive because it eliminates the time, cost and expense associated with adoption of new DSP technology for each one. CEVA's licensees now have a clear migration path within a unified architecture."

The CEVA-X architecture combines Instruction Level Parallelism (ILP) with configurable two, four or eight MAC options, 16 or 32-bit data word, 16 or 32 instruction set, and the capability to extend the instruction set with customer defined co-processors. CEVA-X's innovative reusable architecture gives customers complete deployment flexibility within a unified architecture roadmap.

CEVA-X was designed as a fully synthesizable solution (soft-core) allowing licensees to customize DSPs to individual markets with complete flexibility in terms of cost, power consumption, clock speed, foundry and process. CEVA-X DSP cores are supplied with a complete design flow allowing the licensee to run cost/performance analysis in rapid-time. CEVA-X also counters the escalating costs of SoC design with the industry's first truly compiler-driven architecture, enabling designers to write in high-level languages such as C and C++ and thereby slash development cost and time-to-market. Licensees are fully supported with complete tools and development environment.

CEVA-X's market-leading performance has been confirmed in independent benchmarks by Berkeley Design Technology (BDTI), which showed that the CEVA-X (X1620 implementation) will be faster than all DSPs in its class.* CEVA-X family of DSP cores' performance capabilities opens a wealth of new markets for programmable DSP technology, including software radio, 3G multimedia phones, multimedia (e.g. H264) processing, VoIP gateways, broadband modems, and home entertainment products such as DVD, digital TV, personal video recorders and set-top boxes.

"CEVA-X is a groundbreaking technology bringing unprecedented performance and scalability to DSP, and a vital component of our product portfolio that gives our customers a complete end-to-end DSP solution," said Chet Silvestri, CEO of CEVA, Inc. "With the early adoption by one of the world's leading cellular companies, we are confident that CEVA-X will play a key role in helping us reinforce and consolidate our position as a global DSP leader."

Key features of the new CEVA-X architecture include:

  • Scalability, based on the ability to use the same software code and other infrastructure components with 2, 4 and 8 MAC units, those supporting 16- and 32-bit instruction widths, and multiple memory architecture subsystems. Up to eight instruction sets can be issued in parallel utilizing four different computation clusters, enabling up to 11 billion instructions per second.
  • High performance, achieved through a unique mix of Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) and Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) architectures. For example, CEVA-X1620 performs 12 times faster than CEVA's own Teak DSP.
  • Support for high-level C/C++ programming, coupled with the use of a highly efficient optimizing compiler that dramatically reduces development time as well as permitting code to be ported from another DSP core quickly and efficiently.
  • Extendibility, enabling licensees to tailor products to their specifications by adding proprietary instructions and functions with an open-instruction customizable format. This permits the development of customized and differentiated products while using a standard DSP platform.
  • A complete Integrated Development Environment (IDE) tool chain for both hardware and software development, including a compiler, simulator, debugger, profiler, assembler, linker and DSP libraries, different modular development system boards,
  • a DMA controller, CPU interfaces, and multiple peripherals and interfaces.
    • Ultra-low dynamic power consumption, achieved by built-in dynamic sleep mode mechanisms.
  • Enhanced by CEVA's portfolio of DSP Centric-IP, including the Xpert Open Framework environment that enables plug-and-play with CEVA Xpert Applications including multimedia (audio, image, video), GPS, VoIP, Bluetooth, and high-speed serial communications.

The release of the CEVA-X architecture and the CEVA-X1620 coincides with a corporate name change from ParthusCeva, Inc., to CEVA, Inc., that was announced separately today. CEVA will be hosting a CEVA-X online technical seminar tomorrow Tuesday December 9th at 10am EST. Visit www.techonline.com for the live or archived presentation.

CEVA-X1620 Features

  • 16-bit Fixed-Point Dual MAC architecture
  • Unique mix of Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) and Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD)
  • High frequency - up to 450 Mhz @ 0.13u worst case process
  • High DSP performance. For example:
    • 2 cycle FFT butterfly
    • Single cycle Viterbi Add-compare-select
  • Up to 8 instructions in parallel
  • Variable instruction width (16 or 32-bit) and variable instruction packets
  • Ultra low dynamic power consumption achieved by a built in mechanism which shuts off any unnecessary logic
  • Enable Customer Extensions
  • Highly efficient C/C++ Compiler
  • Complete set of software and hardware development tools chain

* "BDTI Benchmarks" is a trademark of Berkeley design technology. For benchmark results and other information, visit www.BDTI.com.

About CEVA, Inc.
Headquartered in San Jose, CEVA (NASDAQ: CEVA and LSE: CVA) is the leading licensor of DSP cores and integrated applications to the semiconductor industry. CEVA markets a portfolio of DSP IP in three integrated areas: CEVA DSPs; CEVA-Xpert Open Framework Environment; CEVA-Xpert Applications; supported by Xpert-Integration services. CEVA's products are used in over 60 million devices each year. The company was formerly known as ParthusCeva, Inc. For more information, visit www.ceva-dsp.com.

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