Menta Introduces the Industry's First eFPGA Soft IP at the Design Automation Conference

New offering gives engineers vastly greater flexibility in implementing Menta’s low-power, high-performance secure technology

SOPHIA-ANTIPOLIS, France -- December 7, 2021 -- Menta S.A.S., a premier supplier of embedded FPGA (eFPGA) solutions, today announced the industry’s first eFPGA soft IP offering, giving engineers greater flexibility in how they implement their SoC and ASIC designs. The announcement came at the 58^th Design Automation Conference in San Francisco, where Menta is exhibiting at booth #1346.

Since 2013, Menta’s technology has been available as hard IP cores on any standard cell technology. Menta’s new soft IP eFPGA can be mapped by the end user to any foundry on any standard cell technology node, enabling customers to do the physical implementation in their own environment with their own EDA tool flow. As a result, Menta’s Soft IP offers ASIC/SoC designers more flexibility, higher control of their IP implementation, and lower costs.

eFPGA IP is increasingly in demand because it allows hardware to be reconfigured after manufacturing, giving end products more upgradeability and longer life cycles. The eFPGA IP acts as “design insurance” for SoCs and ASICs that include algorithms which are evolving faster than the chip manufacturing cycle.

Since eFPGAs are programmed after the SoC is manufactured, they can offer one more layer of security by enabling the programming of the security protocols after the manufacturing process. Menta’s technology is being used to design highly secure, low-cost, low-power accelerators for AI, cryptography, and telecommunication algorithms, which can struggle on CPUs but can benefit from the eFPGAs’ parallel computing.

“Menta’s eFPGA soft IP enables customers to integrate eFPGAs in the same way as any other digital IP with lower cost and better control of their SoC/ASIC design,” said Vincent Markus, CEO of Menta. “We are also working with a number of design service providers, who can perform the physical implementation for their customers and apply their specialties and expertise to facilitate fast and reliable delivery of their customers’ SoCs.”

Menta’s eFPGA technology is the industry’s only 100% standard-cell based solution. This standard-cell based approach enables engineers to rapidly port the eFPGA to whatever new process geometry/variant they need – even in industrial and rad-hard grade versions. Menta’s Soft IP is available immediately.

Menta also offers Origami programming software enabling Menta’s eFPGA programming in an easy-to-use, intuitive FPGA programming tool environment. The software itself can be distributed to the SoC provider and their end customers.

ABOUT MENTA

Menta is a privately held company based in Sophia-Antipolis, France. For ASIC and SoCs designers who need fast, right-the-first time design and fast time to volume. Menta is the proven eFPGA pioneer whose design-adaptive standard cells-based architecture and state-of-the-art tool set provide the highest degree of design customization, best-in-class testability, and fastest time-to-volume for SoC design targeting any production node at any foundry. For more information, visit the company website: www.menta-efpga.com.