The Week In Review: Jan. 13
By Ed Sperling
Mentor Graphics inked a preferred partner deal with Freescale to deliver a Vista-based virtual prototyping solution for its processors. The really interesting part of this one is that Mentor is now facing off against Synopsys and Cadence in the virtual prototyping market. Mentor also signed a deal with Ecrio to collaborate on Nucleus-based LTE IP Multimedia Subsystem platforms, and it acquired the Flowmaster Group for computational fluid dynamics simulation software. In the world of stacked die, this stuff will play an interesting role.
Tensilica introduced an audio DSP core that it claims improves performance more than 1.5 times for post-processing in smart phones and audio entertainment. Post processing is vital as the size of speakers continues to shrink. The smaller and flatter the device, the more complex algorithms that are required to reconstruct sound.
Cadence expanded its NAND flash IP lineup to include support for the Open NAND Flash Interface 3.0 spec. This spec is aimed at eliminating a bandwidth bottleneck in memory.
Arteris won a deal with Beijing Nufront for its network-on-chip interconnect IP and its shared memory technology. Beijing NuFront makes mobile phone SoCs.
Tags: Arteris, Beijing NuFront., Cadence, Ecrio, Flowmaster Group, Freescale, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Tensilica