Tensilica Joins HSA Foundation to Help Establish Standards for Embedded Heterogeneous Computing

Update: Cadence Completes Acquisition of Tensilica (Apr 24, 2013)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – March 19, 2013 –Tensilica, Inc. today announced that it has joined the HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation, a not-for-profit consortium dedicated to developing architecture specifications that will unlock the performance and power efficiency of parallel computing engines found in many modern devices. Tensilica will contribute its years of experience assisting customers in bringing heterogeneous multicore SoC (system-on-chip) designs to market to the development and promotion of standards for parallel computing. 

“Tensilica is a long-established leader in multicore technology, delivering unique solutions that enable both control plane and compute-intensive dataplane functions,” stated Steve Roddy, Tensilica’s vice president of product marketing and business development. “Tensilica customers today use multiple Tensilica processors for diverse functions such as audio offload, wireless baseband, image processing and general purpose control. We welcome the efforts and ambitions of the HSA to bring standards to the market that will greatly facilitate innovation in embedded applications.”

“Tensilica is a recognized industry pioneer in dataplane processor technology and multicore solutions, and we look forward to their valued contributions to the HSA Foundation,” said Greg Stoner, vice president and managing director of the HSA Foundation. “Tensilica’s dataplane processors are widely used by the world semiconductor leaders, and by embracing the standards established by the HSA Foundation, can reduce time-to-market while improving both performance and power efficiency.”

Tensilica’s DPUs (dataplane processing units) are used in chip designs for smartphones, digital televisions, tablets, personal and notebook computers, and storage and networking applications. These DPUs are most often used to offload and accelerate the compute-intensive tasks from the main CPU. Therefore, developing an efficient heterogeneous system architecture is of critical importance to designers using Tensilica’s DPUs.

About the HSA Foundation

The HSA (Heterogeneous System Architecture) Foundation is a not-for-profit consortium for SoC IP vendors, OEMs, academia, SoC vendors, OSVs and ISVs whose goal is to make it easy to program for parallel computing. HSA members are building a heterogeneous compute ecosystem, rooted in industry standards, for combining scalar processing on the CPU with parallel processing on the GPU while enabling high bandwidth access to memory and high application performance at low power consumption. HSA defines interfaces for parallel computation utilizing CPU, GPU and other programmable and fixed function devices, and support for a diverse set of high-level programming languages, thereby creating the next foundation in general purpose computing. For more information, visit www.hsafoundation.com.

About Tensilica

Tensilica, Inc. is the leader in dataplane processor IP core licensing with over 200 licensees. Dataplane processors (DPUs) combine the best capabilities of DSPs and CPUs while delivering 10 to 100x the performance because they can be optimized using Tensilica’s automated design tools to meet specific and demanding signal processing performance targets. Tensilica’s DPUs power SoC designs at system OEMs and seven out of the top 10 semiconductor companies for designs in mobile wireless, telecom and network infrastructure, computing and storage, and home and auto entertainment. Tensilica offers standard cores and hardware/software solutions that can be used as is or easily customized by semiconductor companies and OEMs for added differentiation. For more information on Tensilica’s patented, benchmark-proven DPUs visit www.tensilica.com.

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