Sonics Develops Industry’s First Energy Processing Unit Based on the ICE-Grain Power Architecture
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Sonics Develops Industry’s First Energy Processing Unit Based on the ICE-Grain Power Architecture

“Energy Processing for Power-Sensitive SoCs” Seminar Series Highlights Real-World Power Savings Using New ICE-G1 EPU

Milpitas, Calif. – Sonics, Inc., the world’s foremost supplier of on-chip network (NoC) technologies and services, today announced that it has developed the IP industry’s first Energy Processing Unit (EPU) based on the company’s ICE-Grain™ (Instant Control of Energy) Power Architecture originally introduced in 2015. Sonics’ ICE-G1™ product is a complete EPU enabling rapid design of system-on-chip (SoC) power architecture and implementation and verification of the resulting power management subsystem. Sonics also announced the “Energy Processing for Power-Sensitive SoCs” seminar series which highlights power savings results from real-world customer use cases.

About EPUs

No amount of wasted energy is affordable in today’s electronic products. Designers know that their circuits are idle a significant fraction of time, but have no proven technology that exploits idle moments to save power. An EPU is a hardware subsystem that enables designers to better manage and control circuit idle time. Where the host processor (CPU) optimizes the active moments of the SoC components, the EPU optimizes the idle moments of the SoC components. By construction, an EPU delivers lower power consumption than software-controlled power management. EPUs possess the following characteristics:

About ICE-G1

The Sonics’ ICE-G1 EPU accelerates the development of power-sensitive SoC designs using configurable IP and an automated methodology, which produces EPUs and operating results that improve upon the custom approach employed by expert power design teams. As the industry’s first licensable EPU, ICE-G1 makes sophisticated power savings techniques accessible to all SoC designers in a complete subsystem solution. Using ICE-G1, experienced and first-time SoC designers alike can achieve significant power savings in their designs.

ICE-G1 is currently available on a limited basis to qualified customers. ICE-G1 works with all internal and third-party IP offerings from processors to I/Os to NoCs. Combining the ICE-G1 EPU with the SonicsGN® NoC simplifies fine-grained power management for SoC integration teams.

Markets for ICE-G1 include:

ICE-G1 key product features are:

About the Seminar Series

The “Energy Processing for Power-Sensitive SoCs” seminar series agenda covers:

Seminar locations:

Silicon Valley
Wednesday, May 25th, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Santa Clara Hyatt Regency, 5101 Great America Parkway
Camino Real Room (second floor)

Austin, Texas
Monday, June 6th, 11:00 am – 1:00 pm
Austin Hilton (DAC HQ), 500 East 4th Street
Meeting room 408, (fourth floor)

Sonics will announce Japan, Korea, and Taiwan seminar locations and dates over the summer.

For individuals and companies interested in attending the seminars, please send an email request to:
Email Contact

About Sonics, Inc.

Sonics, Inc. (Milpitas, Calif.) is the trusted leader in on-chip network (NoC) and power-management technologies used by the world’s top semiconductor and electronics product companies, including Broadcom®, Intel®, Marvell®, MediaTek, and Microchip®. Sonics was the first company to develop and commercialize NoCs, accelerating volume production of complex systems-on-chip (SoC) that contain multiple processor cores. Sonics’ ICE-Grain Power Architecture is the IP industry’s first complete power management solution, which enables SoC designers to exploit “dark silicon” states to save more energy than conventional software-based approaches. Sonics is also a catalyst for ongoing discussions about design methodology change via the  Agile IC Methodology LinkedIn group. Sonics holds approximately 150 patent properties supporting customer products that have shipped more than four billion SoCs. For more information, visit  sonicsinc.com