ISIS IP chooses EnSilica’s eSi-RISC as the MCU for its 2nd generation DAB baseband solution

ISIS IP’s 2nd generation DAB baseband solution will be a system-on-chip design with EnSilica’s eSi-1600 16-bit soft processor core providing on-chip MCU capability. EnSilica’s eSi-1600 will replace the discrete ARM-based MCU used in ISIS IP’s current DAB solution.

ISIS IP chose EnSilica’s eSi-RISC for both technical and commercial reasons after an extensive evaluation of the available processor options that would facilitate greater system integration.

eSi-RISC has enabled ISIS IP to integrate a full-featured MCU into its 2nd generation DAB baseband solution significantly reducing overall power and creating a solution that also supports DAB+, DMB-Radio and FM as well as providing an MP3 and AC3 audio player. With a substantially reduced bill of materials, coupled with EnSilica’s commercial licensing arrangements for eSi-RISC, ISIS IP’s 2nd generation integrated DAB baseband solution will be even more cost and performance competitive than its current solution.

“We chose the eSi-1600 for our 2nd generation integrated DAB baseband solution for its excellent code density and the ability to optimise the core to reduce overall power for our specific application,” said Dr. Guoyu Wang, ISIS IP’s co-founder and CEO. “Particularly beneficial is the ability to implement, in only a few additional logic gates, our custom CRC instruction which reduces power consumption and memory size requirements. We fully expect the highly integrated nature of our 2nd generation integrated DAB baseband solution featuring eSi-RISC to open up a host of new and exciting opportunities for us.”

eSi-RISC is a family of highly configurable and low-power soft processor cores ideally suited to the demands of the communications industry. It scales across a wide range of applications and uniquely supports both 16 and 32-bit configurations and has been extensively silicon proven in a number of ASIC and FPGA technologies. It includes the eSi-1600 16-bit processor, eSi-3200 32-bit processor, eSi-3250 32 bit processor and eSi-3250sfp incorporating a single precision floating point unit. The processor cores also benefit from selectable Harvard/von Neumann memory and configurable cache options. The highly pipelined nature of their design gives customers a technology-independent solution that is ideal for both FPGA applications and ASIC technologies.

“This exciting design win for ISIS IP’s 2nd generation integrated DAB baseband solution reflects our increasing success with fabless semiconductor companies and eSi-RISC’s undoubted appeal to the design demands of the fabless business model,” said Ian Lankshear, Managing Director of EnSilica. “Where low power, a small footprint and configurability are required along with competitive licensing arrangements, then eSi-RISC delivers with ease.”