Elliptic Semiconductor Licenses Cryptographic Co-Processor Engine to picoChip Designs Limited

. Elliptic Semiconductor today announced that picoChip Designs Limited has selected Elliptic's cryptographic co-processor engine for use in its PC202, PC203 and PC205 picoArray processors.  picoChip processors are targeted at wireless markets such as 802.16d fixed WiMAX, 802.16e mobile WiMAX and W-CDMA cellular systems where security is extremely important.

Peter Claydon, COO and co-founder of picoChip said," The picoArray PC20x series is designed to address a wide variety of advanced wireless systems, many of which require encryption. The versatility of the Elliptic solution was a particular attraction for us. As a result, we can support both W-CDMA and WiMAX in the same device, as well IPsec for home basestations / femtocells."

There has been a significant effort by the IEEE to standardize on security standards for wireless design. However, interoperability requirement with legacy equipment requires that a cryptographic engine not only supports the Data Encryption Standard (DES) but also many modes of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). The cryptographic engine jointly defined by picoChip and Elliptic permits picoChip to address a broad range of wireless standards which reflects the diversity of customers and applications for the picoArray processor family.

"Security design remains challenging with multiple standards and compliance requirements spanning legacy equipment and standards such as WiMAX that were not ratified when we began working with picoChip," indicated Al Hawtin, Vice-President of Marketing for Elliptic Semiconductor. "Working closely with the team at picoChip we were able to successfully conclude and implement the desired engine that will span the current and forecasted requirements for the wireless markets picoChip plans to serve."

picoChip recently announced that it won this year's Frost & Sullivan's prestigious Semiconductors Industry Innovation & Advancement of the Year Award. The Award recognizes picoChip for demonstrating excellence in product innovation, development, and commercialization of its multi-core DSP products and platforms for the wireless industry

About picoChip

picoChip provides software defined radio solutions to the key challenges of cost, development time and flexibility for the next generation of wireless systems. The company's multi-core processors deliver a world-beating price/performance combination. picoChip has achieved design wins with numerous major companies. Uniquely, the company also delivers complete, standard-compliant reference designs for UMTS (HSDPA, upgradeable to HSUPA) and WiMAX/WiBRO (both 802.16d and 802.16e, with support for AAS and MIMO). WiMAX systems using picoChip are available from Airspan, Intel, Ericsson, Nortel, Marconi and a number of other manufacturers. The PC102 picoArray is also being used to develop other advanced wireless protocols such as 802.20 and TD-SCDMA, and in 4G research. picoChip's web site can be found at www.picochip.com.  
 
About Elliptic Semiconductor

Headquartered in Ottawa, Elliptic Semiconductor Inc. (http://www.ellipticsemi.com/) provides semiconductor intellectual property (IP) cores and software for secure communications ranging from low power to multi-gigabit per second implementations.  Elliptic SIP cores enable system-on-chip designers to efficiently balance power, performance and silicon area in complex security-based systems.  Demanding customers in markets such as implantable devices, wireless, storage, digital rights management (DRM), RFID and high performance communications trust Elliptic IP cores.