Skyviia Corporation Selects Sonics' MemMax AMP for Next-Generation Mobile and Digital Multimedia SoCs

Agreement Marks First MemMax AMP Licensee for Sonics in Less  Than a Month Following Product Release

TAIPEI and Milpitas, Calif., – October 14, 2010—Sonics, Inc.®, the world’s leading supplier of on-chip communications IP, today announced that its MemMax AMP™ memory scheduler has been selected by Skyviia Corporation as part of the company’s SoC designs for next-generation multimedia products, such as DTVs, set-top boxes, digital photo frames (DPFs), IPTVs and portable media players.  This marks Sonics’ first MemMax AMP licensee since the company’s highly sophisticated memory scheduler was unveiled last month.  MemMax AMP is the first standalone memory scheduler to optimize memory bandwidth and DRAM scheduling on-chip in a single IP block. 

Skyviia is a leading Taiwanese IC design company spun off from Skymedi, the market leader in storage controller ICs.  Skyviia offers complete SoC system solutions for a diverse range of state-of-the-art digital life products that integrate video, internet and audio, and provides competitive, high-end multimedia technologies for its customers. The company also offers turnkey IPTV/IP STB hardware and software solutions for Google’s Android™ platform. 

“MemMax AMP offers us a very powerful and cost-effective memory scheduler that enables us to achieve the highest processing levels for video decoding, content downloading, resolution quality and compression,” said Brian Sung, vice president, R&D Division at Skyviia.  “This high level of simultaneous processing can tax any memory subsystem, but Sonics provides an unparalleled ‘triple play’ of performance, power and area—which are critical to maintaining strong SoC performance in today’s digital multimedia designs.  Skyviia is also extremely encouraged and pleased with Sonics’ decision to build its presence in Taiwan and establish a state-of-the-art local design center for future memory IP and subsystem solutions.”

Introduced last month, MemMax AMP is the only on-chip memory IP solution that allows SoC designers and system architects to significantly boost memory bandwidth utilization from the average ~45-50 percent level up to 85 percent in some designs, without re-architecting the memory subsystem.  MemMax AMP is well suited for advanced SoCs requiring high-bandwidth DRAM access, such as high-definition video streaming in smart phones, tablet computers, personal media players, HDTVs, DVRs, and other popular consumer devices. 

“Skyviia’s partnership with Sonics is further evidence of our commitment to establishing an office and design center in Taiwan to provide local companies with best-of-breed memory IP and subsystem solutions,” said James Mac Hale, vice president of Asia Operations at Sonics.  “MemMax AMP is well-suited for SoC providers, like Skyviia, who are constantly innovating and require that extra headroom necessary for next-generation products.  MemMax AMP is the only product today that can deliver that increased memory efficiency in an IP block for any advanced SoC designs requiring high-bandwidth DRAM access, such as high-definition video streaming and decoding.”

About Sonics

Sonics, Inc. is a pioneer of network-on-chip (NoC) technology and today offers SoC designers the largest portfolio of intelligent, on-chip communications solutions for home entertainment, wireless, networking and mobile devices.  With a broad array of silicon-proven IP, Sonics helps designers eliminate memory bottlenecks associated with complex, high-speed SoC design, streamline and unify data flows and solve persistent network challenges in embedded systems with multiple cores.  As the leading supplier of on-chip communications networks for the embedded market, Sonics has enabled its customers to ship more than 750 million units worldwide.  Founded in 1996, Sonics is headquartered in Milpitas, Calif. with offices worldwide.  For more information, please visit www.sonicsinc.com and www.sonicsinc.com/blog.