CEVA Extends its IP Platforms for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi with RISC-V

RivieraWaves suite of Bluetooth 5 (low energy and dual mode) and Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax IPs offered with integrated RISC-V MCU

BARCELONA, Spain, - Mobile World Congress - February 26, 2018 – CEVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CEVA), the leading licensor of signal processing platforms and artificial intelligence processors for smarter, connected devices, today announced that its market-leading RivieraWaves Bluetooth and Wi-Fi intellectual property (IP) platforms are now offered with an optional integrated open-source RISC-V MCU.

Rick O’Connor, executive director of the non-profit RISC-V Foundation, commented: “RISC-V continues to gain strong traction in the IoT space, where its code density, performance and power characteristics are ideally suited. Having a leading IP vendor such as CEVA providing Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity solutions for RISC-V is a further boost to our ecosystem.”

CEVA’s RivieraWaves family offers a comprehensive suite of IPs and platforms for embedding Bluetooth (both low energy and dual mode) and Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax into SoCs/ASSPs. Within these SoCs, the protocol software executes on the customer’s choice of embedded processor. CEVA’s latest RivieraWaves platforms are the first to offer Bluetooth and Wi-Fi IP solutions integrated with a RISC-V sub-system, including a comprehensive set of peripheral IP. These integration-ready system solutions are ideal for those customers seeking freedom from standard 3rd party processor architectures.

The RISC-V processor implementation is perfectly matched to typical IoT device requirements in terms of performance and die cost, with a Coremark/MHz figure of 2.44 in a gate count of under 20Kgates. Blending perfectly with the low power architecture of the RivieraWaves IP, the RISC-V based Bluetooth platforms offer the industry’s lowest clock frequency and most power efficient Bluetooth low energy and Bluetooth dual mode solutions. For heavier data loads, the RivieraWaves Wi-Fi RISC-V platforms are the world’s smallest fully-integrated solutions, and scale from basic 1x1-11b-1Mbps up to 2x2-11ac/ax MU-MIMO-1201Mbps. These pre-integrated RISC-V based platforms significantly reduce the development time and bill-of-materials for CEVA’s customers, allowing for rapid product development and market introduction.

“Commercial freedom coupled with the ability to innovate are key aspects of RISC-V, which resonate with our customers,” said Aviv Malinovitch, vice president and general manager of the Connectivity Business Unit at CEVA. “We have seen RISC-V quickly evolve from an exciting concept into an impressive alternative to mainstream embedded processors, especially for communication subsystems. By offering RISC-V implementations of our RivieraWaves Bluetooth and Wi-Fi solutions, we have further extended the processor options for our customers, providing them a highly attractive alternative for their product designs.”

The RISC-V processor is compliant with the RV32IMC 32-bit ISA, supporting compressed instructions and integer multiplication/division. Coupled with the popular compiler/debugger toolchains such as GNU GCC/GDB and LLVM, and with growing support from major tool vendors including Lauterbach, the RISC-V processor presents a familiar and efficient software development environment for embedded developers.

With more than 1.5 billion devices shipped to date and dozens of licensees, the RivieraWaves Bluetooth and Wi-Fi IP is widely deployed in consumer and IoT devices with many of the world’s leading semiconductor companies and OEMs. Optimized implementations are available targeting a broad range of connected devices, including smartphones, tablets, speakers, headsets and earbuds, hearing aids and other wearables, consumer electronics, smart home, industrial and automotive applications. For more information, visit https://www.ceva-dsp.com/app/connectivity/ .

About CEVA, Inc.
CEVA is the leading licensor of signal processing platforms and artificial intelligence processors for a smarter, connected world. We partner with semiconductor companies and OEMs worldwide to create power-efficient, intelligent and connected devices for a range of end markets, including mobile, consumer, automotive, industrial and IoT. Our ultra-low-power IPs for vision, audio, communications and connectivity include comprehensive DSP-based platforms for LTE/LTE-A/5G baseband processing in handsets, infrastructure and machine-to-machine devices, advanced imaging and computer vision for any camera-enabled device, audio/voice/speech and ultra-low power always-on/sensing applications for multiple IoT markets. For artificial intelligence, we offer a family of AI processors capable of handling the complete gamut of neural network workloads, on-device. For connectivity, we offer the industry’s most widely adopted IPs for Bluetooth (low energy and dual mode) and Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax up to 4x4). Visit us at www.ceva-dsp.com