Lucid Information Technology, Ltd., Licenses Tensilica's Diamond 212GP Controller Core

Update: Cadence Completes Acquisition of Tensilica (Apr 24, 2013)

SANTA CLARA, CA, – April 18, 2006 –Tensilica, Inc. today announced that Lucid Information Technology, Ltd., of Kfar Netter, Israel, has licensed its Diamond Standard 212GP general-purpose processor core for a new scalable multi-GPU chip design project.

The Diamond 212GP is a flexible mid-range RISC controller that includes instruction and data caches, a 16-bit multiply-accumulator, DSP functions and zero-overhead loop support. The Diamond 212GP also includes a single-cycle latency local interface bus. This processor core provides 40 percent better performance and 30 percent lower power than an ARM946E-S processor.

"We particularly liked the in-bound DMA capability of the Diamond Standard series,” stated Moshe Steiner, CEO, Lucid. “With this feature we are able to realize significantly higher computational and data throughput when compared to alternative architectures."

The Diamond 212GP provides designers with direct interface input ports and output wires for direct connections to other hardware blocks on the chip, providing a convenient and lower-power alternative to bus-based, memory-mapped I/O interfaces. Thirty-two individually sampled input ports and 32 single-bit output wires provide device-driver programmers with a generous number of general-purpose I/O bits for hardware interface and system control. These I/O ports provide direct control between the Diamond processor and related peripherals. These wires and ports are similar in concept to GPIO pins on classic microcontrollers, and are unavailable on other popular processor cores.

“We are pleased to welcome Lucid to the Tensilica licensee family as one of the first publicly announced licensees of the new Diamond Standard family,” stated Steve Roddy, Tensilica’s vice president of marketing. “As a fast moving startup with an aggressive design target, Lucid’s choice of the Diamond Standard series showcases our goal of making the Diamond Series processors the quick on-ramp to Tensilica’s architecture.”

About Lucid Information Technology, Ltd.

Lucid Information Technology is an early stage, venture-backed company in Israel focused on developing a high-performance SoC and architecture for scaling graphics performance in computers and games reaching performance and price-performance ratios never considered possible before.

About Tensilica

Tensilica offers the broadest line of controller, CPU and specialty DSP processors on the market today, in both an off-the-shelf format via the Diamond Standard Series cores and with full designer configurability with the Xtensa processor family. Tensilica’s low-power, benchmark proven processors have been designed into high-volume products at industry leaders in the digital consumer, networking and telecommunications markets. All Tensilica processor cores are complete with a matching software development tool environment, portfolio of system simulation models, and hardware implementation tool support. For more information on Tensilica's patented approach to the creation of application-specific building blocks for SOC design, visit www.tensilica.com.