Sonics and Arasan Collaborate On End-to-End IP Subsystems for Mobile Market

Industry IP Leaders Team to Optimize MIPI LLI and UFS Performance in Smart Phones, Tablets; Minimize Latency and Power for Popular Mobile Applications

SAN FRANCISCO, DESIGN AUTOMATION CONFERENCE. – June 5, 2012 – Sonics, Inc., the leader in system IP for cloud-scale SoCs, and Arasan, a leading provider of Total IP Solutions, today announced a joint agreement to provide SoC designers with end-to-end IP subsystems for today’s most popular mobile devices.

The companies will partner to offer optimized MIPI® Low Latency Interface (LLI) and Universal Flash Storage (UFS) subsystems, coupled with on-chip network and memory subsystems so that semiconductor and system companies can significantly streamline their IP integration process while increasing the performance of the resulting SoCs. These pre-configured and pre-verified subsystems will dramatically minimize the latency and power, and increase flash memory performance in smart phone and tablet SoCs, as well as other key mobile application processors.

A number of existing application processors combine Sonics and Arasan IP solutions to provide designers with increased SoC performance and advanced power efficiencies for embedded solutions used in some of the most popular mobile platforms around the world. Under the new joint agreement, Arasan MIPI and UFS interfaces will be integrated with Sonics’ sophisticated development environment and system IP to ease system-level integration and increase SoC performance efficiencies for mobile applications.

Arasan offers a comprehensive suite of I/O subsystems and is the only IP vendor to offer both the MIPI LLI controller IP along with a matching Type 1 M-PHY , enabling low pin-count connectivity between chips on mobile platforms. Arasan is also the only provider of the JEDEC-compliant UFS link layer IP incorporating both the MIPI UniProSM link layer and a matching Type 1 M-PHY. With the newly combined solution, SoC designers can now use Sonics StudioXE development environment to simply drag and drop MIPI and UFS IP blocks onto the chip to work seamlessly with Sonics’ leading portfolio of on-chip networks and memory subsystems.

“Our partnership with Arasan ensures that we can now offer a true end-to-end mobile interface subsystem for SoC designers, improve the delivered SoC performance, and streamline the arduous IP integration and performance optimization process,” said Drew Wingard, Sonics’ CTO. “The mobile market has exploded over the last two years and Sonics has aggressively innovated in response to the burgeoning cloud-connected mobile devices that SoCs are fueling. Our alliance with Arasan, including support for the new MIPI LLI and UFS standards, gives Sonics an even stronger global footprint in this fast-paced market and allows us to extend our product reach as we address the most critical mobile SoC design challenges.”

For the ultimate peak-performance tablet and smart phone SoCs, designers can combine Sonics GN™ GHz NoC, the industry’s first and only GHz NoC, with UFS flash for memory access speeds up to 1.2 GB/sec using four lanes of Gear 2 M-PHY, and MIPI LLI for the lowest latency chip-to-chip communications.

“Today’s mobile SoC market is moving very rapidly and provides little room for design error and time-to-market setbacks,” said Andrew Haines, vice president of marketing at Arasan. “By partnering with the industry leader for on-chip networks and system IP for cloud-connected devices, Arasan and Sonics can help designers quickly achieve higher levels of QoS, greater IP interoperability and lower power with a near seamless design integration process for their most demanding mobile applications.”

About Arasan

Arasan Chip Systems is a leading provider of Total IP Solutions for mobile storage and connectivity applications. Arasan’s high-quality, silicon-proven, Total IP Solutions include digital IP cores, analog PHY interfaces, verification IP, hardware verification kits, protocol analyzers, software stacks and drivers, and optional customization services for MIPI, USB, SD, SDIO, MMC/eMMC, CF, UFS, xD and many other popular standards. Arasan’s Total IP products serve system architects and chip design teams in mobile, gaming and desktop computing systems that require silicon-proven, validated IP, delivered with the ability to integrate and verify both digital, analog and software components in the shortest possible time with the lowest risk.

Unlike many other IP providers, Arasan’s Total IP Solution encompasses all aspects of IP development and integration, including analog and digital cores, hardware development kits, protocol analyzers, validation IP and software stacks and drivers and optional architecture consulting and customization services. Based in San Jose, CA, USA, Arasan Chip Systems has a 16 year track record of IP and IP standards development leadership.

About Sonics

Sonics, Inc. is the world’s leading supplier of system IP for cloud-scale SoCs. As a pioneer of network-on-chip (NoC) technology, Sonics offers SoC designers the world's largest portfolio of system IP for mobile, digital entertainment, wireless and home networking. With a broad array of silicon-proven IP, Sonics helps designers eliminate memory bottlenecks associated with complex, high-speed SoC design, streamline and unify data flows and solve persistent network challenges in embedded systems with multiple cores. Sonics has more than 110 patent properties to date and has enabled its customers to ship more than one billion chips worldwide. Founded in 1996, Sonics is headquartered in Milpitas, Calif. with offices worldwide. For more information, please visit www.sonicsinc.com.