Sonics Marks 15 years of IP Leadership and Innovation

Company’s 15-year Anniversary Validates Role of On-Chip Network IP in Advancement of System-Level Design, SoC Integration

MILPITAS, Calif., – September 7, 2011 – Sonics, Inc.®, the world’s number one supplier of on-chip communications IP, announced that the company will mark its 15-year anniversary this month.  Since 1996, Sonics has delivered production-proven IP to leading semiconductor suppliers and OEMs around the globe, and today is the number one supplier worldwide for the mobile, consumer entertainment, wireless and home networking markets. 

“As an IP pioneer, it’s exciting to look back on how the on-chip communications IP market—a completely new category of semiconductor IP—developed amidst a global economic climate that profoundly changed the semiconductor landscape,” said Grant Pierce, Sonics President, CEO and co-founder. 

“It’s been an exciting 15 years and Sonics continues to innovate and invest in key technologies, continued Pierce.  We are evolving our business with system-level and software design innovations, advanced memory subsystems, and next-generation NoC solutions.  We’re fortunate to have maintained deep, long-standing relationships with global leaders in high-growth markets, and we thank our customers and partners who have helped achieve this milestone with us.”

Major Milestones & Achievements:

• World’s number one provider of on-chip network IP with Sonics’ customers shipping more than one billion chips to date
• High-growth technology leader with an extensive portfolio of more than 100 patent properties and the largest array of on-chip communications IP of any network-on-chip (NoC) provider in the world
• Strong and growing customer roster worldwide, including seven of today’s top 10 global semiconductor companies
• World-class engineering organization with more on-chip network expertise than all of our competitors combined—attracting critical talent from industry-leading companies in the SoC design, IP design and EDA markets—including Cadence, IBM, Intel, Mentor Graphics, MIPS Technologies, Motorola, NXP Semiconductors Synopsys and Texas Instruments    
• Sustained profitability and growth, notably a 23% compounded annual growth rate over the last three years, as well as consistent profitability commensurate with other IP market leaders—despite the macro-economic and industry-specific challenges of the last several years
• Worldwide expansion of design centers in the major technology hubs—including recent 2010 openings in Taiwan and the central U.S.
• More than 150 design starts in the market today without a single field chip failure
• Teaming with a range of industry-leading semiconductor IP, EDA and design chain companies including ARM, Cadence, MIPS Technologies, Synopsys and TSMC
• Strong investments in key emerging technologies, such as 3D-enabled Wide I/O DRAMs, coherency and the critical integration of software, subsystems and power-aware SoC designs

Driving SoC Integration, Performance and the Future of NoC

Sonics is the only semiconductor IP company today that helps designers use any third party IP to seamlessly connect and manage all the on-chip communications functions required for peak performance, power-aware and cost-efficient designs.  Sonics continues pushing integration and performance levels for next-generation SoC design—ensuring that existing products, including SonicsSX™, SonicsLX™ and SNAP™, match the industry’s highest performing NoCs in the market for any application. 

The company’s most recent releases of these products are already showing increased peak operating frequencies of up to 25 percent, combined with logic gate area reductions of 20 percent.  Later this quarter, Sonics will announce its next-generation, highest performance NoC solution currently under development.

 “Sonics is one of the industry leaders making great strides in transforming system-level design as we know it,” said Jim Feldhan, president of Semico Research.  “From innovative memory subsystem IP to high-performance NoC solutions, Sonics has long been an IP innovator and well-respected design partner, and we look forward to watching how the company takes network-on-chip solutions to new heights over the next 15 years.”    

About Sonics

Sonics, Inc. is a pioneer of network-on-chip (NoC) technology and today offers SoC designers the largest portfolio of intelligent, on-chip communications solutions for home entertainment, wireless, networking and mobile devices.  With a broad array of silicon-proven IP, Sonics helps designers eliminate memory bottlenecks associated with complex, high-speed SoC design, streamline and unify data flows and solve persistent network challenges in embedded systems with multiple cores.  As the leading supplier of on-chip communications networks, Sonics has more than 100 patent properties and has enabled its customers to ship more than one billion units worldwide.  Founded in 1996, Sonics is headquartered in Milpitas, Calif. with offices worldwide.  For more information, please visit www.sonicsinc.com and www.sonicsinc.com/blog.