Coreworks introduces SideWorks, a high-performance, small footprint and ultra low power licensable Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Core

SideWorks™ creates breakthrough in addressing Audio and Video applications in demand of area-optimized, performance and optimal power consumption

Lisbon, Portugal -- November 11, 2008 -- Coreworks announced today that it has added SideWorks™, to its IP portfolio of licensable cores, a high performance digital signal processing engine. The multi-standard SideWorks™ core is a fully customizable architecture targeted for reconfigurable digital signal processing applications. The SideWorks design is based on a coarse-grain reconfigurable array and is optimized for the efficient execution of algorithms comprise of nested loops containing complex logic and arithmetic expressions. These computationally expensive algorithms are common in a vast number of application domains. Additionally, the post-silicon reconfigurable feature allows reduction of silicon area by combining multiple fixed-function hardwired blocks in fewer SideWorks instances.

"Coreworks' reconfigurable DSP technology retains unique features for high-performance audio processing with very low power consumption, which is vital to any kind of portable audio application," said Mario Manninger, austriamicrosystems Director of Engineering, Communications Business Unit.

“Our fully configurable DSP allows users to tailor the core to their specific application, eliminating the overhead associated with classical DSP implementation,” said Jose de Sousa, Coreworks Founder and CEO, “We are extremely pleased with our recent DSP benchmarking results placing Sideworks, with a significant margin, well ahead of other licensable DSP cores in the key areas of performance, power consumption, core-area and memory access.”

SideWorks’ key features include pre-silicon configurability of nested loop depth, number of input and output ports, type and number of arithmetic functional units, datapath width, datapath routing and address generation. In addition the core supports runtime partial reconfiguration using a memory mapped configuration register file. SideWorks supports bus interfaces such as CoreConnect™/OPB or AMBA®/AHB or custom.

“Sideworks’ scalable cluster architecture allows algorithms to efficiently run in serial or parallel within one cluster. The architecture also allows for applications to concurrently run in massively parallel-cluster configuration for demanding tera-bit video and communications processing,” said Fernando Gonçalves, Coreworks founder and COO. “Sideworks unique architecture provides pre-silicon configuration and post-silicon reconfiguration enabling a single core to support many different applications.”

Coreworks delivers a pre-verified set of commonly used kernel macros such as Viterbi decoder, complex FFT, FIR and IIR, running on SideWorks. Coreworks provides full deliverables for ASIC and FPGA implementation - VHDL/Verilog source code or synthesizable netlist , HDL test-bench, synthesis script, detailed datasheet and user documentation for system integration and FPGA based evaluation and development boards.

For more information regarding coreworks SideWorks and other products, please contact coreworks or visit www.coreworks-sa.com.

About austriamicrosystems

Austriamicrosystems provides a wide range of leading analog products including versatile Standard Linear products. Designed for global leaders in the Communications, Industry, Healthcare and Automotive markets, our products offer reliable high performance across a broad spectrum of applications. 25 years of analog experience make us experts for lowest power consumption and system power optimization. In-house manufacturing ensures superior quality and outstanding flexibility of supply.

About coreworks®

Coreworks® S.A™ was founded in 2001 in Lisbon, Portugal with the vision of revolutionizing the DSP industry. Coreworks provides high-performance, reconfigurable HW/SW DSP solutions for multi-standard communications and multimedia applications. Coreworks’ IPs have been instigated in a wide variety of products, and in various process geometries. Coreworks’ solutions alleviate S/W algorithm bottlenecks or replace fixed-function hardware blocks in many demanding audio, video and communications applications by efficient partitioning of the signal processing algorithms between the host processor and Coreworks’ SideWorks™, eliminating the need for expensive and power hungry DSP devices or multi-processor alternatives.
SideWorks™ and AudioWorks™ are Coreworks’ proven, low-power and area optimized IPs. With powerful proprietary tools like SideGen™ (design) and SideConf™ (program) and Core Access Networks® (debug) Coreworks has unsurpassed productivity in creating Application Specific DSP IPs targeting emerging applications such as satellite radio, DTV, IP-Phone, MP3 and other portable audio players, mobile devices, soft radio, communication gateways and more.