Sonics And Moortec Partner To Provide Temperature-Compensated DVFS Capability For SoC And MCU Designers

New Power Management Solution Integrates Sonics' Energy Processing Units with Moortec's Temperature Sensors to Improve Energy Efficiency

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Oct. 25, 2017 -- Sonics, Inc., the world's foremost supplier of on-chip network (NoC) and power management technologies and services, and Moortec, specialists in embedded in-chip sensing, today announced their partnership that integrates the companies' products to provide advanced power management techniques to system-on-chip (SoC) and MCU designers. The partnership couples Sonics' ICE-P3™ with Moortec's compelling Temperature Sensors to enable temperature-compensated, dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) in chip designs intended for power-sensitive devices such as mobile/handheld and the Internet of Things (IoT). The partnership solution is available immediately.

Employing DVFS enables chip designers to dramatically reduce energy consumption by lowering frequency to match dynamic throughput conditions and simultaneously lowering the voltage to the minimum that safely supports that frequency. However, the minimum voltage depends upon both semiconductor process skew and on-chip temperature, which frequently causes energy-wasting overdesign to cover worst-case process and temperature conditions. While it is increasingly common to re-optimize voltage values for process skew during manufacturing test, compensating for temperature requires on-chip thermal monitoring. Thermal sensors also provide invaluable alarm conditions that warn of thermal runaway conditions.

The Moortec Embedded Temperature Sensor IP product line offers high testability and high accuracy and allows for device performance optimization and device characterization. ICE-P3 is the IP industry's first product to automate DVFS implementation and is the newest member of the ICE-Grain™ Family of Energy Processing Units (EPUs) that identifies, sequences, and controls power state transitions in hardware up to 500X faster than conventional software-based approaches. In the combined solution, the EPU modulates the requested voltage to deliver a desired frequency based upon directly-connected temperature sensor data. Additionally, thermal alarms may be connected to the EPU to force power state changes that reduce heat generation, such as slowing down or shutting off IP cores or subsystems.

"We are on a mission to bring sophisticated power management capabilities to mainstream SoC and MCU designers," said Grant Pierce, CEO of Sonics. "This partnership with Moortec gives our mutual customers access to automated DVFS capabilities compensated by embedded temperature sensor data. With this solution, designers can make their chips significantly more energy efficient and get the most out of the process technology."

"Accurate and robust thermal sensing on chip is a corner-stone to the realization of efficient optimization strategies. Moortec is pleased to be supporting the compelling range of EPU products being developed by Sonics for our advanced node partners," said Stephen Crosher, CEO of Moortec.

About Moortec
Established in 2005, Moortec (Plymouth, UK) provides compelling embedded subsystem IP solutions for Process, Voltage & Temperature (PVT) monitoring, targeting advanced node CMOS technologies from 40nm down to 7nm. Moortec's in-chip sensing solutions support the semiconductor design community's demands for increased device reliability and enhanced performance optimization, enabling schemes such as DVFS, AVS and power management control systems. Moortec provides excellent support for IP application, integration and device test during production. Moortec's high-performance analog and mixed-signal IP designs are delivered to ASIC and System on Chip (SoC) technologies within the consumer, mobile, automotive, high performance computing and telecommunications sectors. For more information, please visit www.moortec.com, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

About Sonics, Inc.
Sonics, Inc. (San Jose, 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™ Family is the IP industry's first complete Energy Processing Unit (EPU), which enables rapid development of SoC power management subsystems. Sonics holds approximately 150 patent properties supporting customer products that have shipped more than four billion SoCs. For more information, visit sonicsinc.com, and follow us on Twitter (@sonicsinc) and LinkedIn.