MIPS, Tensilica to speed up SoC design

LONDON: MIPS Technologies Incorporated and Tensilica Incorporated, two major licensors of processor intellectual property, have said they are collaborating to speed up SoC (system-on-chip) design activity on the Android platform.

In a joint statement, MIPS Technologies Incorporated and Tensilica Incorporated said that MIPS Technologies’ MIPS32 processor core, integrated with Tensilica’s HiFi-2 Audio DSP, will be put on show in suites of both firms at the Consumer Electronics Show to be held in Las Vegas, the United States, on January 7-10, 2010.

Art Swift, vice-president (marketing) of MIPS Technologies Incorporated, elaborated in the joint statement that the collaboration between MIPS Technologies and Tensilica are a part of the efforts to build a “complete partner infrastructure” that will offer a total MIPS-based Android solution to designers of next-generation connected devices. Both firms, Art Swift, added, are currently in the process of pushing the Android platform into a wide range of consumer electronic products.

According to Art Swift, the HiFi 2 Audio DSP, made by Tensilica, is an ideal audio processor since it has been proven in millions of consumer devices, has low power-consumption, and since it comes with a comprehensive library of over 60 audio codecs for almost any standard – ranging from simple MP3 to Dolby and DTS – as well as a complete suite of partner solutions for audio post-processing.