Ramon Chips Licenses CEVA-X DSP for High Performance Computing for Space Applications

RC64 multi-core processor from Ramon integrates sixty-four CEVA-X1643 DSPs, enabling massively parallel processing for satellite communication, observation and science research applications

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., May 19, 2015 -- CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), the leading licensor of DSP and IP platforms for cellular, multimedia and connectivity, today announced that Ramon Chips, Ltd., a fabless semiconductor company focused on developing unique Radiation Hardened ASIC solutions for space applications, has licensed the CEVA-X1643 for its RC64 64-core parallel processor, targeting high performance space computations. Ramon will integrate sixty-four CEVA-X1643 DSPs into the RC64 processor, delivering a huge leap in computational power for next-generation satellites deployed for communications, earth observation, science and many other applications.

RC64 is a 65nm CMOS parallel processor, providing 384 GOPS, 38 GFLOPS and 60 Gbps data rate. Each of the 64 CEVA-X1643 cores has direct access to a 4MB shared memory, in addition to private memories and caches, including support for ECC. The cores are managed at runtime by a hardware synchronizer that automatically manages parallel tasks, enabling nearly-perfect dynamic load balancing among the cores and facilitates task switching at a very high rate and very low latency.

"The underlying processor technologies in satellites have remained mostly unchanged for nearly two decades, resulting in poor performance for today's processing-intensive applications," said Prof. Ran Ginosar, CEO at Ramon Chips. "Our new RC64 processor based on the CEVA-X1643 DSP promises to change this, bringing outstanding performance, programmability and scalability to next-generation satellite systems, and enabling the massively parallel processing required for many of the latest satellite communications, research and observation applications."

"We are excited to work with Ramon Chips on the development of their RC64 64 DSP satellite processor, one of the largest multi-core use cases for our DSPs," said Eran Briman, vice president of marketing at CEVA. "Massively parallel processing is key for high performance space computing and the CEVA-X1643 delivers exceptional capabilities for the demanding use cases that Ramon is targeting."

The CEVA-X1643 DSP core, features a Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) architecture combined with Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) capabilities. Its 32-bit programming model supports a high degree of parallelism, including the ability to process up to eight instructions per cycle, and 16 SIMD operations per cycle. It is equipped with a high performance AXI-based memory sub-system, adopts fully-cached instruction and data memories with ECC, supports multi-core and many-core architectures, and includes an innovative Power Scaling Unit (PSU), which provides advanced power management for both dynamic and leakage power. For more information, visit http://www.ceva-dsp.com/CEVA-X1643.

About Ramon Chips
Ramon Chips is a fabless semiconductor company focused on developing unique Radiation Hardened VLSI /ASIC solutions for space applications. Our silicon proven RadSafe™ technology provides extreme high immunity to all space radiation effects in LEO, GEO and outer space missions, while maintaining high density, high performance and low power. The company participates in a number of Horizon 2020 research programs, including VHiSSI, QI2S and MacSpace. For additional information, visit www.ramon-chips.com.

About CEVA, Inc.
CEVA is the leading licensor of cellular, multimedia and connectivity technologies to semiconductor companies and OEMs serving the mobile, consumer, automotive and IoT markets. Our DSP IP portfolio includes comprehensive platforms for multimode 2G/3G/LTE/LTE-A baseband processing in terminals and infrastructure, computer vision and computational photography for any camera-enabled device, audio/voice/speech and ultra-low power always-on/sensing applications for multiple IoT markets. For connectivity, we offer the industry's most widely adopted IPs for Bluetooth (Smart and Smart Ready), Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n/ac up to 4x4) and serial storage (SATA and SAS). One in every three phones sold worldwide is powered by CEVA, from many of the world's leading OEMs including Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, HTC, LG, Coolpad, ZTE, Micromax and Meizu. Visit us at www.ceva-dsp.com