Synopsys intros DesignWare sensor and control IP subsystem

MOUNTAIN VIEW, USA: Synopsys Inc. announced the DesignWare sensor and control IP Subsystem, a complete hardware and software solution optimized for a wide range of ultra-low power embedded sensor and control applications.

The Sensor and Control IP Subsystem integrates the DesignWare ARC EM4, EM6, EM5D or EM7D 32-bit processors, delivering efficient real-time control and DSP performance required for ultra-low power sensor- and control-based applications. Newly integrated peripherals include a UART for serial communication as well as a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) block and Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC) interface for actuator/motor control functions.

The optional IEEE 754-2008 compliant floating point unit (FPU) reduces energy consumption by up to 10X for sensor fusion applications implementing floating point operations. The DesignWare Sensor and Control IP Subsystem provides designers with a pre-verified, SoC-ready IP subsystem that delivers the energy-efficient processing required in markets such as the Internet of Things (IoT).

“Efficient integration of dedicated IP has become increasingly critical to meet the sensor processing requirements of IoT solutions,” said Chuck Gritton, CTO at Hillcrest Labs. “Synopsys has created a compelling IP subsystem that helps designers create more power-, area-, and performance-efficient sensor processing solutions for IoT devices.”

The DesignWare Sensor and Control IP Subsystem is designed to process data from digital and analog sensors and always-on audio sources with minimal power consumption. This enables offloading of the host processor and more efficient processing of the data. The fully configurable subsystem includes the choice of an ARC EM4, EM6, EM5D or EM7D processor.

All the processors support up to 2 MB of closely coupled memory (CCM) for both instruction and data, while the EM6 and EM7D also incorporate up to 32 KB of instruction and data cache for maximum system performance and flexibility. The EM5D and EM7D combine high-efficiency control and signal processing with more than 100 DSP instructions.

The subsystem’s integrated UART, PWM and ARM AMBA APB interface peripherals combined with the configurable GPIO, SPI, I2C and ADC/DAC interfaces offer a wide range of off-chip sensor and actuator connections.

The DesignWare Sensor and Control IP Subsystem is optimized to process the extensive amount of data in sensor fusion applications. The subsystem includes a rich library of off-the-shelf DSP functions supporting filtering, correlation, matrix/vector, decimation/interpolation and complex math operations.

Designers can implement these sensor-specific DSP functions in hardware using a combination of native DSP instructions within the EM5D or EM7D processor and tightly coupled hardware accelerators to boost performance efficiency and reduce power consumption by up to 85 percent compared to discrete solutions.

An optional IEEE 754-2008 compliant FPU reduces energy consumption by up to 10X for sensor applications requiring single- or double-precision floating point operations. Additionally, the ARC Processor EXtension (APEX) technology enables designers to add their own user-defined instructions or existing hardware to the processor.