UltraSoC selected by Microsemi for growing RISC-V product range

UltraSoC has announced that Microsemi, a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, has licensed UltraSoC’s universal analytics and embedded intelligence platform for use in an expanding range of Microsemi products based on the RISC-V open source processor architecture.

This latest engagement for UltraSoC extends a longstanding relationship with Microsemi. UltraSoC’s embedded analytics are already embedded in a range of Microsemi products, including the company’s advanced, high performance disk drive controllers.

This new engagement also furthers the two companies’ involvement in RISC-V: Microsemi and UltraSoC both hold prominent roles and a shared passion for the development of the ecosystem for RISC-V. Microsemi’s recent announcement of its Mi-V™ ecosystem enhances its leadership role in the RISC-V community. UltraSoC now collaborates with six major RISC-V processor vendors – success that follows the company’s early commitment to support the development of the rapidly growing open source ecosystem. UltraSoC also announced in June that it had launched the industry’s first processor trace solution for RISC-V.

“UltraSoC continues to prove itself invaluable in helping Microsemi cement our leadership position in SoC development,” said Alan Nakamoto, Microsemi vice president, engineering services. “We’re committed to providing a complete solution for development teams looking to leverage the RISC-V architecture, in a broad range of applications. Working with UltraSoC reinforces and tangibly demonstrates that commitment to our customers.”

UltraSoC CEO, Rupert Baines, said: “Microsemi is doing some incredibly exciting work in bringing its high performance semiconductor products on to the RISC-V platform. At UltraSoC we believe the rise of RISC-V represents a fundamental shift: a shift that will benefit the whole technology industry and its customers. We are delighted to be involved and working again with Microsemi to enable its latest designs with our embedded analytics capabilities.”

UltraSoC plays an active role in RISC-V, including a leading role in the debug working group, plus all of the major global RISC-V Foundation workshops. The company continues to be a vocal advocate for the benefits the open source architecture offers. UltraSoC will be at the 7th RISC-V Workshop, taking place in Milpitas, California from 28-30 November.

UltraSoC joined the RISC-V Foundation in 2016, with a mission to provide the RISC-V community with secure, independent on-chip development and debug capabilities; in 2017 it offered its RISC-V processor trace specification for adoption by the RISC-V Foundation as part of the open source specification.

UltraSoC’s embedded semiconductor IP allows designers of complex and powerful devices to create an on-chip infrastructure that non-intrusively monitors a chip’s behavior – both hardware and software. In development, engineers can use this IP to gain an intimate understanding of the interactions between on-chip processor blocks, custom logic, and system software. The application of the benefits of UltraSoC’s embedded analytics are far-reaching, including safety and security for automotive design; cybersecurity applications in server and data centers; and embedding in Internet of Things (IoT) devices.