EnVerv Selects Tensilica for Smart Grid Power Line Communications

Tensilica today announced that EnVerv has licensed cores from the ConnX DSP (digital signal processors) family for use in a power line communications (PLC) system-on-chip (SOC) design for smart grid applications. Tensilica's ConnX DSPs are low-power, customizable dataplane processors (DPUs) that deliver outstanding performance on compiled C code, without the need for assembly code optimization.

"We picked the ConnX DSP core because of its flexible architecture and excellent processing power," stated Dr. Farrokh Farrokhi, executive vice president of engineering at EnVerv. "By using the ConnX DSP we were able to reap the benefits of implementing custom instructions that are unique to our signal processing algorithms, thus giving us the benefit of a custom DSP design while maintaining the flexibility of a soft architecture."

"The EnVerv application showcases the advantages of using a single Tensilica DPU architecture in an SOC design for signal processing, control and DSP," stated Steve Roddy, Tensilica's vice president of marketing and business development. "The ConnX DSP combines both control and DSP functions. Tasks can be easily shifted from one to the other depending on workload. Programming and software maintenance is easier because of the ability to customize the development tools for C code programming, with no need for assembly code optimization."