CoWare and Tensilica Integrate Diamond Standard 106Micro with CoWare ESL 2.0 Technology

This new integration extends the unique relationship between CoWare and Tensilica to the entire Diamond Standard and Xtensa configurable processor product lines. Tensilica’s processors are already being used extensively by designers with CoWare Platform Architect to perform architecture performance analysis for critical design considerations such as, software execution, memory architecture, and bus occupancy, resulting in the design of better products-- faster.

“Our mutual customers have discovered the productivity increase available with CoWare’s powerful tools and their support for ESL 2.0,” stated Steve Roddy, Tensilica’s vice president of marketing. “By working together with CoWare, we’ve been able to help our customers significantly accelerate their SoC platform design cycles.”

“By supporting such a small, low-power, efficient processor, we’re providing our customers with yet another industry-leading processing option in their designs,” stated Tom De Schutter, marketing manager, IP and third-party relationships, CoWare. “A number of very large systems-level companies are using CoWare’s ESL 2.0 solutions with Tensilica’s cores.”

The Diamond Standard 106Micro core measures less than one mm2 in 65-nanometer GP process technology while using just 0.029 mW/MHz of power. It can achieve up to 300 MHz in an area-optimized 65-nanometer GP design or 620 MHz in a speed-optimized 65-nanometer GP design. This gives it a remarkable 750 Dhrystone MIPS of performance in a very small area. The Diamond Standard 106Micro is particularly attractive to designers upgrading from 8- and 16-bit controllers to a 32-bit processor for extra performance and C-level programming flexibility, as well as designers needing a small, efficient system or subsystem-level controller for applications ranging from peripheral and interface design to networking, automotive, industrial control, and consumer devices such as toys, games and entertainment devices.

CoWare Platform Architect is the market-leading tool for platform architecture design, platform verification, and software development. For platform-driven ESL design, CoWare Platform Architect is the industry's most productive SystemC-based graphical environment for capturing the entire product platform and the dash-board for initiating the platform analysis functions. Using CoWare Platform Architect, developers minimize development risks, accelerate development cycle, and improve product performance, which leads to delivering better products faster.