The Week In Review: Design/IoT

The EDA Consortium announced EDA industry revenue increased 7.5% for Q1 2015 to $1877 million, compared to $1746.1 million in Q1 2014. The four-quarters moving average, which compares the most recent four quarters to the prior four quarters, increased by 8.0%. Employment also increased, and according to Wally Rhines, “all categories showed revenue increases except CAE. Geographically, the Americas and Asia-Pacific reported double-digit growth.”

Deals

A collaboration led by the BBC and including ARM, Freescale, and Samsung unveiled the BBC micro:bit – a pocket-sized, codeable computer which as part of the BBC’s most ambitious education initiative for 30 years, will be given to every 11 or 12 year old child in year 7 or equivalent across the UK, for free.

Sequans Communications, maker of single-mode LTE chipsets for the Internet of Things, licensed Arteris FlexNoC IP for use in its next generation of IoT chipsets.

Sonics is collaborating with AlphaChips, a Korean semiconductor design services company, on the development of advanced SoC design platforms. Sonics will provide their NoC for integration of semiconductor IP and consult on the front-end RTL design flow for the SoC platforms.

Synopsys won a deal with design and manufacturing service provider Key ASIC, which will use Synopsys’ RTL synthesis and place-and-route solutions for its consumer, wireless and personal electronics ICs.

Rambus renewed its patent license agreement with Renesas until 2020, covering the use of Rambus patented memory, interface, and security technologies.

Cyberon optimized its CSpotter voice recognition software for Cadence Fusion and HiFi DSPs. CSpotter is a voice recognition engine that supports low-power always listening with keyword spotting.