SUNNYVALE, CA--(Marketwired - Jul 30, 2015) - QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ: QUIK)
- Unique multi-core sensor processing System-On-a-Chip (SoC) provides a tiered architecture with world class computational capability at industry-leading power levels
- Delivers 80% more compute capability than traditional ARM M4F based microcontroller sensor hub solutions at a fraction of the power consumption
- Dedicated voice processing architecture enables always-on voice applications at less than 350 microAmps.
QuickLogic Corporation (NASDAQ: QUIK), the innovator of ultra-low power programmable sensor processing solutions, today announced its new EOS™ S3 sensor processing platform. The EOS platform incorporates a revolutionary architecture that enables the industry's most advanced and computationally intensive sensor-driven applications at a fraction of the power consumption of competing technologies.
The EOS platform is a multi-core SoC that incorporates three dedicated processing engines. These include QuickLogic's proprietary, patent-pending microDSP-like Flexible Fusion Engine (FFE), an ARM® Cortex® M4F Microcontroller (MCU), and a front-end sensor manager. The FFE and sensor manager handle the bulk of the algorithm processing, which minimizes the duty cycle for the floating point MCU. This approach dramatically lowers aggregate power consumption, and enables mobile, wearable and IoT device designers to introduce next generation sensor-driven applications, such as pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR), indoor navigation, motion compensated heart rate monitoring, and other advanced biological applications within their power budgets.
The EOS platform includes a hardened subsystem specifically designed for always-listening voice applications. With its dedicated PDM-to-PCM conversion block, and Sensory™'s Low Power Sound Detector (LPSD) technology, the EOS system enables always-on voice triggering and recognition while consuming less than 350 microAmps, far better than traditional MCU-based solutions.
The EOS platform provides the unique benefit of 2,800 effective logic cells of in-system reprogrammable logic that can be used for an additional FFE or customer-specific hardware differentiated features. No other sensor processing system on the market offers the combination of hardware and software flexibility, computational capacity, and the micro-power operation provided by the EOS platform.
The EOS SoC is designed to maximize the efficiency of QuickLogic's extensive SenseMe™ algorithm library. The EOS S3 platform and SenseMe library are compliant with Android Lollipop as well as various Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS). Since the platform is sensor and algorithm agnostic, it can support third party and customer-developed algorithms through QuickLogic's industry-standard Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) plugin. The IDE provides optimized and proven code generation tools as well as a feature-rich debugging environment to ensure quick porting of existing code into both the FFE and the ARM M4F MCU of the EOS S3 platform.
Based on research data published by IHS iSuppli, the total available market for sensor processing solutions in smartphone, tablet and wearable applications will reach 2 billion units in 2019. "We expect that the annual market for embedded processors as sensor hubs in handsets, tablets and wearable health and fitness devices will exceed 2.0 billion units by 2019," said Tom Hackenberg, Principal Analyst at IHS Technology. This market growth is driven by an increase in the number of sensors in each product as the devices transition from simple products like pedometers, to sophisticated, multipurpose devices that feature always-on capabilities. Providing these demanding capabilities without sacrificing battery life makes power consumption a major factor in the success of these advanced devices. Power efficient sensor hubs, such as QuickLogic's EOS platform, will be the enabling hardware that allows device designers to quickly and easily incorporate multiple advanced features without increasing power drain."
Some of the target applications include but are not limited to:
- Always-on, always-listening voice recognition and triggering
- Pedometry, pedestrian dead reckoning, and indoor navigation
- Sports and activity monitoring
- Biological and environmental sensor applications
- Sensor fusion including gestures and context awareness
- Augmented reality
- Gaming
"QuickLogic's revolutionary EOS platform enables OEMs to deliver a new class of advanced applications previously impractical to implement within the battery life constraints of today's mobile devices," said Brian Faith, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing at QuickLogic. "The EOS platform sets a new standard for multi-core sensor processing. No other solution in the market today can come close to delivering the combination of flexibility, computational bandwidth and ultra-low power consumption."
| Feature |
Details |
| Processor Cores |
180 DMIPS of aggregate processing capability
578 KB of aggregate SRAM for code and data storage |
| QuickLogic Proprietary microDSP Flexible Fusion Engine |
50 KB SRAM for Code
16 KB SRAM for Data
Very Long Instruction Word (VLIW) microDSP architecture
50 microWatts/MHz
As low as 12.5 microWatts/DMIPS |
| ARM Cortex M4F |
Up to 80 MHz
Up to 512 KB SRAM,
32-Bit, includes Floating Point Unit
100 microWatts/MHz; ~80 microWatts/DMIPS |
| Programmable Logic |
2,800 Effective Logic Cells
Capable of implementing an additional FFE and customer-specific functionality |
| Package Configurations |
|
| Ball Grid Array (BGA) |
3.5 x 3.5 mm x 0.8 mm, 0.40 mm ball pitch,
49-ball, 34 user I/O's |
| Wafer Level Chip Scale Package (WLCSP) |
2.5 x 2.3 mm x 0.7 mm, 0.35 mm ball pitch,
36-ball, 28 user I/O's |
| Integrated Voice |
Always-On Voice Trigger and Phrase Recognition Capability, in conjunction with Sensory |
| |
I2S and PDM Microphone Input with support for mono and stereo configurations |
| |
Integrated Hardware PDM to PCM Conversion
Sensory Low Power Sound Detector (LPSD) |
| Interface Support |
|
| To Host |
SPI Slave |
| To Sensors and Peripherals |
SPI Master (2X), I2C, UART |
| To Microphones |
PDM and I2S |
| Additional Components |
|
| ADC |
12-Bit Sigma Delta |
| Regulator |
Low Drop Out (LDO), with 1.8 to 3.6 V input support |
| System Clock |
Integrated 32 kHz and High Speed Oscillator |
| Development Environment |
Industry Standard, Eclipse IDE Plugin |
Availability
Samples of the EOS sensor processing platform will be available in September 2015. For more information, please visit www.quicklogic.com/EOS.
About QuickLogic
QuickLogic Corporation is the leading provider of ultra-low power, customizable sensor processing platforms, Display, and Connectivity semiconductor solutions for smartphone, tablet, wearable, and mobile enterprise OEMs. Called Customer Specific Standard Products (CSSPs), these programmable 'silicon plus software' solutions enable our customers to bring hardware-differentiated products to market quickly and cost effectively. For more information about QuickLogic and CSSPs, visit www.quicklogic.com.
QuickLogic is a registered trademark and the QuickLogic logo and EOS are trademarks of QuickLogic Corporation. All other brands or trademarks are the property of their respective holders and should be treated as such.
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