Week In Review: Design, Low Power

CEVA acquired the Hillcrest Labs business from InterDigital. Hillcrest Labs supplies software and components for sensor processing in consumer and IoT devices. Hillcrest Labs’ MotionEngine sensor processing software already runs on CEVA DSPs (as well as ARM and RISC-V cores) and enables high accuracy 6-axis and 9-axis sensor fusion, dynamic sensor calibration, and application specific features such as cursor control, gesture recognition, activity tracking, context awareness, and AR/VR stabilization. CEVA sees the acquisition as making the company a one-stop-shop for processing all classes and types of sensors. Terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed. Founded in 2001 and based in Maryland, Hillcrest Labs was acquired by InterDigital in 2016.

Cadence unveiled its new Conformal Litmus tool for constraints signoff and CDC signoff. The tool models the design and the constraints using the same interpretation as the Tempus Timing Signoff Solution. It verifies structural correctness of CDC in the design from early RTL through implementation flows and checks for correctness and completeness of constraints at the block level, letting users perform hierarchical block versus top consistency checks at the SoC integration level. The company says it provides 100% signoff timer accuracy with a 10X faster turnaround time versus the previous generation solution.

The NVM Express 1.4 Base Specification has been released to provide improved QoS, faster performance, improvements for high availability deployments, and scalability optimizations for data centers. Features include simplified data recovery and migration, a Persistent Event Log, and Asymmetric Namespace Access (ANA) to enable optimal and redundant paths to namespaces. Additionally, NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) 1.1 specification has entered into final 45-day member review, including support for NVMe-oF on current data center TCP/IP network infrastructure, asynchronous discovery events, and finer grain I/O resource management.

GCT Semiconductor licensed multiple Adesto Analog Front End IP cores for development of its next-generation 4G LTE Modem. GCT cited competitive advantages of best performance at the lowest power as well as the companies’ long relationship and successful engagements.

Mazda adopted Mentor’s Capital for electrical and electronic system design of its entire vehicle platform. Mazda cited the model-based generative design flow and the ability to integrate data across multi-discipline domains to visualize the entire vehicle circuitry.

Cadence reported second quarter 2019 financial results with revenue of $580 million, up 12% from the same quarter last year. On a GAAP basis, earnings per share were $0.38, up 40.7% from $0.27 per share in Q2 2018. Non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.57 in Q2 2019, up 26.7% from $0.45 in the same quarter last year. “We are raising our outlook for revenue, operating margin, earnings and cash from operations for the year while we continue to invest in TAM expansion opportunities that result from our Intelligent System Design strategy,” said CFO John Wall. The company expects total revenue for 2019 in the range of $2.315 billion to $2.335 billion.