Bwave and Ubiso to Demonstrate World's First Licensable Multi-Standard DVB-T2 DTV Demodulation IP Subsystem Based on Tensilica's ConnX BBE16 DSP

Update: Cadence Completes Acquisition of Tensilica (Apr 24, 2013)

Demo at Tensilica’s Booth 6-D101 at Mobile World Congress 2013

SANTA CLARA, Calif. USA – February 15, 2013 –Tensilica, Inc. today announced that Bwave and Ubiso will demonstrate the world’s first licensable multi-standard DVB-T2 demodulation IP subsystem for digital televisions (DTV) based on Tensilica’s ConnX BBE16 DSP (digital signal processor).  The solution will be demonstrated in Tensilica’s booth 6-D101 at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, February 25-28.  Bwave’s engineers defined the system architecture and implemented the subsystem using Tensilica’s ConnX BBE16 DSP and Ubiso’s programmable DVB-x2 forward error correction (FEC) IP. This is a complete reference design platform, ready for chipmakers to drop into their DTV chip designs.

“This complete, turnkey solution will speed adoption of DVB (digital video broadcasting) for broadcasting on cable, satellite and terrestrial networks,” stated Eric Dewannain, Tensilica’s vice president and general manager, baseband business unit. “This demonstration showcases how efficient our ConnX BBE16 DSP is at executing complex algorithms for digital TV demodulation, and how well it pairs with IP from Bwave and Ubiso.”

The low-power ConnX BBE16 DSP is ideal for considering and analyzing multi-standard DTV demodulation scenarios and implementing a universal demodulation engine. It easily interfaces with hardware accelerators, often used in the FEC (forward error correction), and other modules in the demodulator because of its unique direct interfaces that bypass the system bus, thereby speeding data transfers. Designers can easily customize the architecture or modify I/O interfaces, the parameters of the computational units and the memory subsystem using Tensilica’s automated tools. Programming is much easier than with most DSPs because Tensilica supports a C programming model, providing for automatic mapping of C functions, like the demodulation algorithm, to advanced DSP operations.

“When architecting this platform, we needed a proven, cost and power effective, best-in-class DSP IP to ensure our success,” stated Zhou Changming, president of Bwave. “We have been exceedingly pleased with the quality and support we received from both Tensilica and Ubiso.”

Ubiso’s DVB-x2 FEC decoder IP enables very flexible implementation of multi-standard receivers for second-generation digital television. It converts demodulated satellite, cable and terrestrial signals into a robust bit stream for use by the video decoder. This includes all de-interleaving, FEC decoding and output processing steps, using optimized resource-sharing and a high performance LDPC decoder architecture.

“We are very excited about this demonstration, as it is a full system solution, with everything needed to quickly implement in silicon,” stated Marten Kabutz, director at Ubiso.  “We were particularly impressed with the system integration capabilities at Bwave and look forward to extending this platform to new standards, such as DTMB.”

About Bwave

Shanghai Bwave Technology Co., Ltd is a high-tech corporation specializing in wireless/mobile communications and digital TV with IP/ASIC and relative software designing and development. For more information, go to www.bwave.cc.

About Ubiso

Ubiso, a spin-off of the Thomson Group, is a small collaboration of highly experienced engineers and scientists that provide cutting edge IP cores and system architecture services in the field of error control coding and digital signal processing. Since being founded in early 2010, Ubiso has been financed exclusively through IP sales with no outside funding. For more information on Ubiso’s IP portfolio, please see www.ubiso.com.

About Tensilica

Tensilica, Inc. is the leader in dataplane processor IP cores, with over 200 licensees. Dataplane processors (DPUs) combine the best capabilities of DSPs and CPUs while delivering 10 to 100x the performance because they can be optimized using Tensilica’s automated design tools to meet specific and demanding signal processing performance targets. Tensilica’s DPUs power SOC designs at system OEMs and seven out of the top 10 semiconductor companies for designs in mobile wireless, telecom and network infrastructure, computing and storage, and home and auto entertainment. Tensilica offers standard cores and hardware/software solutions that can be used as is or easily customized by semiconductor companies and OEMs for added differentiation. For more information on Tensilica’s patented, benchmark-proven DPUs visit www.tensilica.com.