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IP COREspondence April 5, 2024
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CAST COREspondence The IP Newsletter from CAST, Inc. — April 5, 2024
Spring in the northern hemisphere is bringing a blossoming of in-person technical conferences and trade shows, and CAST will be at many of them.
First up is the 2024 Embedded World Exhibition and Conference in Nuremberg, Germany, April 9–11. We’ll be there talking about how the new IP cores and technologies mentioned below—and the rest of our offerings—can help you save time while building more competitive products.
I hope to see you there, or at any of our several other events listed down below. -- Nikos Zervas, CEO
New IP Core: Secure Boot for SoCs
Protecting electronic systems from hacking or other malicious activities is an increasingly critical priority. For several years, we've offered the semicustom GEON™ SoC Security Platform with our partner Beyond Semiconductor to help developers integrate appropriate security measures in their systems.
Now we are pleased to introduce with Beyond a reusable IP core product that greatly simplifies one of the biggest SoC protection challenges: securing the system boot or start-up process.
The new GEON-SBoot Secure Boot IP Core is a hardware engine that ensures SoC designs execute firmware from trusted sources without being modified. The core is a fast, area-efficient, processor-agnostic, off-the-shelf IP subsystem that system developers can readily use to build boot security into SoCs using RISC-V, ARM, or practically any processor.
Developers use the Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI®), standards for smartphones, wearables, automobiles, laptops, drones, medical devices, and more. The MIPI Alliance sets the specifications for this huge mobile ecosystem, and through our Alliance membership we’re able to develop and provide a variety of MIPI IP cores.
The latest is the MIPI I3C Basic Secondary Controller and Target IP Core. It enables fast, low-power, legacy I2C-compatible interfaces or can serve as an I3C-to-AHB Bridge for sensors and microcontroller designs. The MIPI I3C Basic spec that the core implements is technically identical to MIPI I3C, just with slightly reduced features and licensing that lets developers implement systems with the core without needing to be a MIPI Alliance member and paying the royalties associated with MIPI I3C.
Time Sensitive Networking—with its tight time synchronization and advanced traffic scheduling features—has enabled Ethernet to effectively serve as a higher-speed backbone in automotive systems requiring low-latency and deterministic-delay communication. (See our TSN switch and endpoint cores, for example.)
TSN is also appealing for aeronautic systems, which are equally time-sensitive. It has the potential to replace current standards like MIL-STD-1553 and ARINC-664.
The standard for Aerospace TSN—the 802.1DP profile —is evolving, and our partner Fraunhofer IPMS is part of this effort. Learn more about this application and standards effort in this white paper, Time Sensitive Networking for Aerospace.
Design Challenge: 8051 MCUs in AMBA Systems
SoC developers are still finding effective roles for the 8051 microcontroller. With the new, much faster IP core versions now available, the 8051's 8-bit processing power is perfectly adequate for many system functions. Its benefits include considerably smaller silicon and reduced cod and memory requirements versus 32-bit processors.
Actually integrating 8051s with today’s systems, though, is a significant challenge. AMBA® buses dominate in these systems, but the original 8051 knows nothing about AXI, AHB, APB, or the other AMBA variations.
Our engineering team recently took on the challenge of using the 8051 with its 8-bit bus in a wider bus world. They documented their successful results in a Chip Estimate Tech Talk article. Take a look: 8051s in Modern Systems: Interfacing to AMBA Buses.
Attacking the Defense IP Cores Market
From submarines to satellites, drones to fighter jets, missiles to the Mars Rover, IP cores from CAST have helped agencies and contractors build military and aerospace systems for most of our 30 years.
These customers especially value CAST as a reliable, trusted source for the high-quality, low-risk, extensively supported IP cores their demanding applications require. Building on this positive experience, we’re now steering development resources towards even better products and support for this important global market.
For example, we recently increased our visibility and had excellent conversations at the US GOMACTech conference for government systems, where the theme this year was Community and Collaboration. Going forward, you'll see expansions of our support for relevant technologies and standards—such as DO-254—in the coming year.
If you need IP cores for these systems now, visit our IP Cores for Mission-Critical Systems page to see the most suitable products we offer today and read why CAST can also be your trusted IP supplier right now
Expanding our Partnership with HCLTech
HCL Tech is a well-respected powerhouse in developing custom chip solutions for original equipment manufacturers across the globe. They’ve taken advantage of IP cores from CAST for many years, and we recently renewed and extended this relationship with additional core licenses.
As their president of Engineering and R&D Services, Vijay Guntur, says:
“CAST shares our vision for innovative, industry-leading electronic systems design. Their high-quality and well-supported IP cores, coupled with HCLTech’s system integration design expertise, will enable us to deliver superior custom chips to our customers worldwide.”
