Cores from Tensilica’s (News - Alert) ConnX DSP or digital signal processors family have been licensed by EnVerv. A power line communications (PLC) system-on-chip (SOC) design from EnVerv for smart grid applications will now use ConnX DSP. An announcement in this regard has been made by Tensilica Inc. Outstanding performance on compiled C code, without the need for assembly code optimization is delivered by ConnX DSPs. These low-power, dataplane processors or DPUs provide efficient combination of control and DSP.

In a release, Dr. Farrokh Farrokhi, EVP of engineering at EnVerv, said, "We picked the ConnX DSP core because of its flexible architecture and excellent processing power. By using the ConnX DSP we were able to reap the benefits of implementing custom instructions that are unique to our signal processing algorithms, thus giving us the benefit of a custom DSP design while maintaining the flexibility of a soft architecture."

According to Steve Roddy, VP of marketing and business development at Tensilica, the advantages of using a single Tensilica DPU architecture in a SOC design for signal processing, control and DSP are showcased by the EnVerv application. Both control and DSP functions are combined by the ConnX DSP.

Roddy said, "Tasks can be easily shifted from one to the other depending on workload. Programming and software maintenance is easier because of the ability to customize the development tools for C code programming, with no need for assembly code optimization."