Sonics Supports ARM P-Channel Interface to Extend Commitment to AMBA Ecosystem

Greg Ehmann to Present on SoC Power Management at ARM TechCon

Milpitas, Calif. – November 10, 2015 – Sonics, Inc., the world’s leading supplier of on-chip network (NoC) technologies and services, today announced that it is extending its support for the ARM® AMBA® ecosystem by implementing the P-Channel interface in the Sonics ICE-Grain™ Power Architecture. The strength of the AMBA ecosystem is that it enables companies like Sonics to offer interoperable, value-added technologies for the benefit of customers through open access to interface specifications.

Sonics will reveal more information about its support for ARM’s power interface in a presentation on power management for system-on-chip (SoC) design at ARM TechCon. The presentation, entitled “Enabling Autonomous Hardware Based Power Management with AMBA P-Channel Interface,” is part of the IoT Track and scheduled for 8:30-9:20 on Wednesday, November 11^th, Ballroom E at the annual conference being held in the Santa Clara, CA convention center.

Greg Ehmann, principle engineer from Sonics, will give the presentation, which will cover the benefits of hardware-based power management technology and it’s relation to ARM’s AMBA P-Channel interface. Ehmann is currently the architect for Sonics’ ICE-Grain Power Architecture product development team. His talk will introduce concepts around autonomous power control and contrast the AMBA P-Channel interface with previous AMBA C- and Q-Channel interfaces. Key take aways for presentation attendees include:

1. Hardware based power management saves more power than software control.
2. The AMBA P-Channel interface provides a reusable abstraction of power states for one or more domains that can enable an autonomous hardware power controller to make optimal power decisions.
3. Autonomous hardware control can enable finer grained domains and additional opportunities for savings.

“Power consumption is a huge issue not only for SoC designers, but also across a broad swath of the electronics industry, which is the reason we’re focused on developing new power management IP technology,” said Drew Wingard, CTO of Sonics.

Celebrating More than a Decade of ARM Partnership

Sonics has been an active ARM partner contributing to the success of the ARM ecosystem for more than a decade. The company’s engineering team has been an early reviewer of every ARM interface specification since the first AXI specification in 2003. Sonics’ NoCs currently support a wide range of the published AMBA protocols. During the years that Sonics has participated in the ARM ecosystem, mutual customers have completed hundreds of SoC designs and benefitted from the AMBA ecosystem by delivering billions of SoCs to the market place.

“Sonics is a valued partner and key player in the AMBA ecosystem,” said Nandan Nayampally, vice president of marketing, CPU group, ARM. “We are committed to enabling Sonics’ support of AMBA by providing access to ARM’s next-generation interface specifications.”

For more information about the Sonics power management presentation, visit Sonics’ ARM TechCon Presentation. For more information on the ICE-Grain Power Architecture, visit the Sonics’ website. To learn more about Sonics’ NoC products and power management solutions, visit with Sonics representatives at TechCon booth #420.

About Sonics, Inc.

Sonics, Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.) is the trusted leader in on-chip network (NoC) and power-management technologies used by the world’s top semiconductor and electronics product companies, including Broadcom®, Intel®, Marvell®, MediaTek, and Microchip®. Sonics was the first company to develop and commercialize NoCs, accelerating volume production of complex systems-on-chip (SoC) that contain multiple processor cores. Sonics’ ICE-Grain Power Architecture is the IP industry’s first complete power management solution, which enables SoC designers to exploit “dark silicon” states to save more energy than conventional software-based approaches. Sonics is also a catalyst for ongoing discussions about design methodology change via the Agile IC Methodology LinkedIn group. Sonics holds approximately 150 patent properties supporting customer products that have shipped more than four billion SoCs. For more information, visit sonicsinc.com.