Andes Technology Takes the Lead in Launching RISC-V Total Solutions and Driving Industry-Academia Collaboration with over 120 Projects

Hsinchu, Taiwan – January 09, 2020 – Andes Technology (TWSE: 6533), a leading supplier of high efficiency, low-power 32/64-bit RISC-V processor cores, has cooperated with more than 70 universities worldwide to date, after signing the first contract of industry-academia cooperation with National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) in 2010. Andes continues to provide CPU IP AndesCore™ licensing, software development tool AndeSight™, and hardware development platforms to schools with licensing series from AndeStar V3 architecture to V5 version RISC-V processors. To promote sustainable development in academia, Andes Technology has actively invested various resources in colleges and universities for many years, including supporting schools with software/hardware equipment and participating establishment of joint laboratories with universities, etc. The total number of contracts with universities around the world is currently over 120. Andes believes in the concept of "technology comes from education" and hence has been working with various academic institutions for several years. It gives back to the academia through providing the most advanced RISC-V computing processor cores, SoC technology, complete training materials, professional teaching programs, practical industry experiences, unique certification exams, and many other technologies and services.

RISC-V draws increasing attention due to its market potential and future development with features such as open-source ISA, which is compact, modular and extensible. Many RISC-V enthusiasts in the industry and academia, whether in the United States, Europe, or Asia, are actively involved in developing an extensive range of RISC-V applications, which leads to a flourishing RISC-V ecosystem. With all 120 contracts, Andes provided the latest RISC-V software development tool, RISC-V ISA, debuggers, examples of project implementation, verification and performance analysis of algorithm to schools. In the course teaching section, National Tsing Hua University is the first one using the RISC-V software development tool AndeSight™ provided by Andes for compiler design courses, and further purchasing the RISC-V development platform Corvette F1 for teaching experimental courses and development of student projects. National Taiwan University’s Computer Science and Information Engineering department has also started to use AndeSight™ for compiler design courses.

In the cooperation of CPU IP Cores licensing, the team led by Wai-Chi Fang, Professor in Department of Electronics Engineering (EE), NCTU, obtained the license of AndesCore™ V5 RISC-V N25 core computing processor through the cooperation. It is mainly used for security research and development. Currently, it has been successfully taped out at Taiwan Semiconductor Research Institute; Professor Chen-Yi Lee's team in NCTU adopted Andes RISC-V DSP instruction extension core, to create a face recognition system with artificial intelligence, and published it at 2019 RISC-V Taiwan workshop. "We were surprised that a real-time face recognition system can effectively work with a single RISC-V digital signal processor and DSP-AI program development environment provided by Andes Technology. This means that in many emerging system applications and services, the platform can provide both low-cost and low-power solution, which is a big step forward in developing AIoT ecosystem", Professor Lee said. Yier Jin, Professor at the University of Florida, US, used AndesCore™ A25 processor core for research projects of IoT platforms and adopted the FPGA platform ADP-XC7K160 for development and verification. Dr. Yier Jin said:" Glad to have the opportunity to use Andes RISC-V A25 processor core in our IoT platform project. IoT data computing is very focused on security and reliability, and A25 meets the needs. We hope to carry on more researches through this platform, especially from the security perspective. "

AI has led a worldwide technology trend. Andes RISC-V instruction set architecture features the flexibility to allow developers to quickly implement many creative designs in the field of AI and IoT. Its high-performance and low-power are the keys to success. At present, in addition to the real-time face detection of Professor Lee's team from NCTU, the team of Professor Shanq-Jang Ruan from National Taiwan University of Science and Technology has also collaborated with Andes for AI to have deep learning accelerators using Andes Custom Extension™ (ACE) technology. With the ACE instructions, customers can add their own instructions to AndesCore™. Users only need to create an ACE description file and related concise Verilog file to generate CPU with extended instructions and related software toolchain in a few tens of seconds.

Frankwell Lin, President of Andes Technology, said: "Education is the foundation of industrial development. The huge reason why Silicon Valley in the United States has become a center of information technology is that it has close ties with the researchers and talents from industry-academia cooperation with neighboring higher education institutions. Andes Technology has similar advantage in place, located at Hsinchu Science Park, and close to first-class universities. We are also devoted to expanding the range and the number to sign the industry-academia cooperation projects with the world’s top universities. Through the long-term cooperation, we hope to achieve talent cultivation, interact with higher research institutes, and fulfill corporate social responsibilities. Andes Technology will continue to invest human and material resources to support the RISC-V industry-academia cooperation project. "

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About Andes Technology

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, A25MP/AX25MP, A27/AX27/NX27V, A45/D45/N45 and AX45/DX45/NX45.

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http://www.andestech.com/