HSINCHU, TAIWAN , June 10, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Andes Technology Corporation, a leading supplier of high performance, low-power, compact 32/64-bit CPU cores embedded in over 1 billion SoC in 2018 alone, today announces its RISC-V FreeStart program. The program offers an easy and fast way to build a solid SoC foundation on the commercial-grade RISC-V CPU core N22, available for free download. AndesCore™ N22 is an entry-level, ultra-compact, low-power and performance-efficient RISC-V CPU IP. It delivers the highest 3.95 Coremark/MHz in its class, and offers rich configurable features, including multiplier, interrupt controller, local memory, instruction cache, debug support, and an optional AHB platform. With the RISC-V FreeStart program, SoC engineers can begin designing a RISC-V based SoC without budgeting CPU IP upfront.

“RISC-V is finding rapid adoption and creating high demand, especially in MCU level applications,” said Andes Technology President, Frankwell Jyh-Ming Lin. “Designers are seeking a small, efficient, and yet high performance-efficient commercial RISC-V core to construct their creative SoCs. Unlike open source RISC-V CPUs which are with limited features and lack of documents, and need to be verified by SoC designers first, users of the commercial-grade N22 can skip this time-consuming task which adds nothing to the value of their final SoC and instead spend their precious design resources on their true value added.”

“The N22 CPU is a small, 2-stage pipeline 32-bit RV32I/EMAC RISC-V CPU core, 16 or 32 general purpose registers, multiplier, atomic and compressed instructions. It also supports several unique and configurable features such as StackSafe™ for hardware stack protection, PowerBrake for efficient power management, CoDense™ for code size reduction on top of RISC-V C extension, and local memory and instruction cache for performance boost,” stated Andes CTO and Executive Vice President, Dr. Charlie Hong-Men Su. “The program also provides designers the option of 1-year support and a pre-integrated AHB platform with commonly used peripheral IPs, thus saving the time of sourcing and integrating these into their design. In addition, the RISC-V FreeStart can leverage the AndeSight™ IDE, a professional software development environment with over 15,000 worldwide installations, which has been available for free download.”

Availability
The RISC-V FreeStart program has been launched now. Anyone from industrial professionals to school students is invited to view and sign the online license agreement and download the N22 processor for evaluation purpose. The FreeStart also provides mass production program and university programs that allow industry and academy to make commercial chips with running royalty or for research purpose but allow path of migration to mass production. Design teams can choose the optional technical support program available through Andes online e-service, which comes with an AHB platform RTL code for SoC integration. Please visit FreeStart.andestech.com or simply fs.andestech.com for more detail.

About Andes
Andes Technology Corporation is a public listed company with well-established technology and teams to develop innovative high-performance/low-power 32/64-bit processor cores and associated development environment to serve worldwide rapidly growing embedded system applications.

The company delivers the best super low power CPU cores, including the new RISC-V series with integrated development environment and associated software and hardware solutions for efficient SoC design. Up to the end of 2018, the cumulative volume of Andes-Embedded™ SoCs has reached 3.5 billion with 2018 alone contributing over 1 billion.

To meet the demanding requirements of today's electronic devices, Andes Technology delivers configurable software/hardware IP and scalable platforms to respond to customers' needs for quality products and faster time-to-market. Andes Technology's comprehensive CPU includes entry-level, mid-range, high-end, extensible and security families to address the full range of embedded electronics products, especially for connected, smart and green applications. From 2017, Andes expands its product line to RISC-V processors and provides a total solution in V5 family cores, including N22, N25F/NX25F, D25F, A25/AX25, and A25MP/AX25MP. 

For more information about Andes Technology, please visit
http://www.andestech.com/

Jonah McLeod
Andes Technology Corporation
510 449 8634
jonahm@andestech.com