Sonics Creates Unified SoC Interconnect with AXI(TM) Support

New Version of SonicsMX to Be Unveiled at ARM Developers' Conference

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Oct. 3, 2005--Sonics Inc.®, the premier supplier of system-on-chip (SoC) SMART Interconnects(TM), today announced availability of the newest version of its popular SonicsMX SMART Interconnect, which adds seamless connection and data flow services management for intellectual property cores implemented using the AMBA® 3 AXI(TM) interconnect. Previously released versions of SonicsMX support OCP(TM) 1, OCP 2 and AMBA 2 AHB(TM) protocols. Details of the new version of SonicsMX announced today will be presented during the ARM Developers' Conference '05 being held October 4-6 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, Calif.

As system designers continue to embrace heterogeneous microprocessor architectures in order to combine communications and multimedia functions into one device, emphasis is growing on increasing overall system performance by seamlessly connecting together new and more complex control processor and sub-system processing solutions from a varied number of semiconductor intellectual property (SIP) vendors. As a result, optimizing shared memory accesses has become a critical focus area.

However, the need to employ different interfaces, such as OCP and AMBA, on the same chip to manage the data flows between the critical SIP cores has in the past forced the employment of ad hoc interconnection schemes that severely complicates the SoC developer's ability to achieve higher memory bandwidth. This translates into longer design cycles and escalating development costs, particularly to verify that complex data flow management services have been designed correctly.

By adding support for the AMBA 3 AXI interconnect to the existing OCP and AMBA AHB protocols, the new version of SonicsMX greatly simplifies the SoC developer's overall task. Leveraging Sonics' nine-year history of delivering advanced non-blocking internal interconnects with agent-based advanced data flow services, SonicsMX offers straight forward management of the heterogeneous mix of processing units.

"The performance of multimedia-rich devices is no longer dominated by any one processing system," says Drew Wingard, chief technology officer for Sonics. "SonicsMX delivers high memory bandwidth with guaranteed QoS, highly flexible pipelining options, embedded firewalls for content protection, error and power management, and socket support for mixing and matching data widths, clock frequencies, and protocols including seamless support for advanced AMBA 3 AXI interconnect-based cores such as CPUs."

The unification of the interfaces into SonicsMX also enables modeling all the SoC data flows during the architecture design phase of the SOC development, which is a key breakthrough to dramatically reducing design times.

"Using the SonicsMX interconnect, SoC designers can rapidly integrate high-performance ARM CPUs, including the ARM1176JZ-S(TM) processor and the ARM11(TM) MPCore(TM) processor," said John Cornish, vice president of marketing, Processor Division, ARM. "The addition of native AMBA 3 AXI interconnect support enables designers to efficiently implement processor to memory data flows and build systems with multiple interfaces in a well structured manner."

Recently introduced as a new segment of the semiconductor intellectual property market, interconnects such as SonicsMX are recognized as critical to implementing heterogeneous or often called "platform" architectures because the economics of outsourcing these advanced data flow tasks is an accelerating trend.

"The interconnect market is one of the fastest growing in the SIP market, and Sonics has become a major contributor in this segment," says Rich Wawrzyniak, senior analyst, Semico Research.

Availability

SonicsMX is currently available. For further information contact 1.650.938.2500 or visit www.sonicsinc.com.

About Sonics

Sonics, Inc. is the premier supplier of SMART Interconnects that deliver high SoC design predictability and increased design efficiency. Major semiconductor and systems companies including Broadcom, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Toshiba have applied Sonics' SMART Interconnects in leading products in the wireless, digital multimedia and communications markets. Sonics is a privately-held company funded by Investar Capital, Smart Technology Ventures, TL Ventures, Easton Hunt Capital, JAFCO Ventures, and H&Q Asia-Pacific. For more information, see www.sonicsinc.com