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AbstractA Swiss research center has developed a family of processors with ultra low power consumption to use for embedded control and digital signal processing. Power consumptions as low as 6 µW/MHz make these processors specifically well suited for applications where battery life is a key feature of the product (medical, security, multimedia, sensing, robotic, portable). Type of collaboration sought: license agreement or technical cooperation.DetailsA family of processors has been developed which provide flexible processing capabilities at ultra low electrical power consumption. These processors have already been integrated in several System-on-Chip platforms for applications as diverse as vision systems, wireless communication systems, security systems, portable multimedia devices and other consumer products.These applications all benefit from the ultra low power consumption of the processor (and the integrated circuit they are embedded in) to extend the battery life. The local processing capabilities can further reduce the energy consumption of a device by reducing the amount of information to be stored and/or transmitted. The ultra low power consumption also makes these processors a good fit for multiprocessor environments where the overall power consumption and/or temperature need to be controlled. The processors are available with complete software development kits based on the GNU gcc C compiler and gdb debugger, the Eclipse integrated development environment, and a clock cycle accurate instruction set simulator. Given that the same design team also integrates System-on-Chip (SoC) circuits, a hardware development kit is also available which supports several of the existing SoC circuits with embedded processors. This enables a rapid evaluation of the processors on existing silicon and can also be used as a turn-key development platform for future SoCs. This Swiss company, founded in 1984, is a private research and development center specializing in microtechnology, nanotechnology, microelectronics, system engineering and communications technologies with in-house facility for development, prototyping and small series production. Innovative Aspects: -The family of processors offers a range of processing power to support applications requiring control type processing, DSP type processing or a mix of the two. -The processors support clock frequencies beyond 150 MHz. -The design of the processors integrates many optimizations to reduce the electrical power consumption, thereby capable of reaching consumptions as low as 6 µW/MHz for a 65 nm CMOS process. -The processors are a good fit for multiprocessor environments where the overall power consumption and/or temperature need to be controlled
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