What's your embedded strategy?

Tensilica
The definition of embedded drives us

The question “What is your embedded strategy?” assumes that embedded strategies are fundamentally separate from other electronic system strategies, but that assumption is wrong, and getting wronger every day. How do we separate a smartphone from a tablet from an ultramobile? How do we define applications that are split between the phone and the cloud?

So I would define “embedded” in a more useful way: as energy-sensitive, cost-sensitive hardware/software systems. Then the question becomes, “What’s your strategy for energy- and cost-sensitive hardware and software?”

Tensilica’s approach has three parts. The first part is to make optimization and specialization of processors simple, inexpensive and complete.

Historically, processor development has been so slow and expensive that one processor design was forced to serve a wide and divergent spectrum of application requirements. When generation of the processors is automated, each processor can be leaner and faster in the target applications.

At Tensilica, we routinely provide efficiency improvements of ten- to twentyfold, with the most specialized processors achieving efficiency improvements of more than a hundredfold over conventional processors.

The second part is to create rich software environments for every processor, so that software developers have all the compiler, debug, simulation, profiling and operating systems needed for fast, reliable development.

Third, we design, verify and deliver hardware and software building blocks for the most important communications and multimedia functions, especially for wireless baseband, audio and video/imaging. We also have a broad ecosystem of partners that deliver additional software packages, systems know-how and subsystems, especially in baseband and multimedia.

Tensilica now has almost 200 licensees and has shipped more than 1 billion processor cores. We focus on high-volume SoC applications in a range of end markets where our customers’ success hinges on world-beating energy efficiency, throughput and software sophistication. — Chris Rowen

Chris Rowen is founder, chief technology officer, board member and first president of Tensilica. He was a pioneer in the development of RISC architecture at Stanford in the early 1980s and helped start MIPS Computer Systems in 1984. Rowen received his BA in physics from Harvard University and his MS and PhD in electrical engineering from Stanford University.