Cortus and RivieraWaves Partner to Provide Complete Bluetooth Low Energy and Classic Bluetooth BR/EDR Low Power Platforms

The IP is a complete solution combining RivieraWaves’ RF, modem and baseband hardware and the protocol stack running on the integrated APS3 processor from Cortus. All these elements form a common reference platform including bus system, memory interfaces and peripherals. This ready-to-use integrated solution, called the RiCoW Platform, ensures first time success and reduces time to market when used as the backbone of an SoC, or as a sub-system in a bigger SoC such as baseband or application processors.

“The APS3 is the perfect CPU Core for our Bluetooth IP! This ultra-low power processor core provides more than enough processing power to not only run our Bluetooth protocol stacks but also demanding customer applications whilst allowing us to achieve an ultra-low power system. The tiny silicon footprint ensures that our customers can integrate Bluetooth into their systems without dramatically increasing their budgets”said Ange Aznar, President and CEO of RivieraWaves.

Mike Chapman, CEO of Cortus, said “This is an ideal partnership, our processor IP perfectly complements RivieraWaves’ advanced wireless technology. Our APS3 offers a perfect platform to robustly and efficiently run the various Bluetooth protocol stacks. Our customers will have an ultra low power Bluetooth platform on which to base their solutions.”

RivieraWaves provides a set of Bluetooth IP blocks composed of basebands, modem, radio and software protocol stack to address Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, Bluetooth 3.0 and Bluetooth 4.0 (aka Bluetooth low energy) standards for integration into System on Chips. RivieraWaves recently announced the world’s first qualified Bluetooth low energy baseband IP. The Bluetooth IP blocks are flexible to accommodate the requirements of any Bluetooth enabled product such as sport & fitness wireless sensors, medical wireless sensors, watches, remote controllers, home/building control & automation devices, set top boxes, mobile phones, PCs/laptops, audio peripherals (mono/stereo headsets, hands free car kits, stereo speakers).

The Cortus APS3 is a fully 32-bit processor designed specifically for embedded systems. It features a tiny silicon footprint (the same size as an 8051), very low power consumption, high code density and high performance. A full development environment (for C and C++), is available, which is available for customisation and branding for final customer use. The ecosystem around the APS3 is rich and well developed; it includes tools, peripherals typical of embedded systems, bus bridges to ensure easy interfacing to other IP and system support and functions such as cache and memory management units. For the most demanding designs the APS3 can be used in a multi-core configuration. The APS3 processor core is currently in production in a range of products from security applications to ultra low power RF designs.