EnSilica, a leading provider of IC design services and system solutions have recently completed a major project with a Tier1 mobile communications company, to deliver a world-class Remote Radio Head (RRH) solution based on the Altera’s High End Stratix FPGA technology.

EnSilica were responsible for design and verification tasks within the RRH processing chain along with the integration and verification of the top level design, followed by timing closure & fitting. Altera also provided CPRI IP, customised for the specific application and extensive use was made of the Altera DSP Builder tools to generate timing-optimised register transfer level (RTL) code.

The project was divided into a number of phases, ending with the delivery of a timing closed/functionally verified production device ready for HW integration and SW testing. On-time delivery was a paramount requirement to ensure the testing team were kept fully utilised and the delivery commitments to the end customer were met.

EnSilica succeeded in meeting all delivery dates for the project.

This was a great example of how the combination of EnSilica’s high quality design services offering and Altera technology and IP can deliver the best possible solution for our customers. For some customers adopting leading-edge FPGA technologies can be daunting, but with EnSilica engaged, customers can be totally confident that the development is in safe hands and they will have a production ready device in the shortest possible time. This is good for the customer and good for Altera.

EnSilica are a member of the Altera Design Services network, bringing together companies with the experience and expertise to enable Altera’s customers achieve their challenging product development needs – lowering risk and accelerating time to market.

Mark Packmann
Major Account Manager, Altera

Michael Sharpless
Worldwide Partner Program Manager, Altera

After an extensive search, we found EnSilica's eSi1600/3200 to be an excellent match for our controller IP requirements. We were very pleased with the quality of the code and the documentation. Technical support was perfect during the entire engagement, always prompt and relevant. The ASIC implementation of the core performed as expected in the first tape-out.

As an early-phase start-up with a tight R&D budget, Solantro benefitted from an excellent technical and business partnership with EnSilica, allowing us to move to the next level.

Christian Cojocaru
Director IC Engineering
Solantro Semiconductor Corp.

EnSilica have supported Alcatel-Lucent in the development of a Remote Radio Head FPGA.

EnSilica were responsible for the design and verification of a number of modules within the RRH processing chain along with the integration and verification of the top level design prior to timing closure & fitting in the chosen FPGA device. The project also included the integration of CPRI IP from the FPGA vendor into the design.

The project was divided into a number of phases, ending with the delivery of a timing closed/functionally verified drop into the wider Alcatel-Lucent organisation for HW integration and SW testing. On-time delivery was a paramount requirement to ensure the testing team were kept fully utilised and the delivery commitments to the end customer were met.

EnSilica succeeded in meeting all delivery dates for the project.

EnSilica adopted a rigorous verification methodology - developing an extensive set of self-checking testcases verifying each module as well as chip level simulation. This was significantly different from previous FPGA designs where HW testing was started after minimal simulation. This approach resulted in significantly faster device validation - with each drop showing a high degree of functionality from first switch-on. The availability of comprehensive test-cases ensured that any HW issues could be quickly investigated and resolved.

This was the best HW bring-up we have ever experienced. The quality of deliverables from EnSilica provided high confidence that the demanding timescales for the project could be achieved.

A key benefit for Alcatel-Lucent was the ability of EnSilica to re-size the team based upon the scope of the work needed for a particular phase. The EnSilica team ranged from 2 engineers up to a maximum of 7 during the peak phases of the project. Being able to work on multiple drops in parallel significantly reduced the overall project timescales. Most of the support was undertaken at EnSilica’s dedicated design centre in Wokingham, along with on-site support as required. The availability of project management support from EnSilica ensured that Alcatel-Lucent were always fully informed of the status of work being undertaken, schedule and issues requiring attention.

EnSilica have shown themselves to be a flexible and highly skilled design services partner and certainly someone we would use again on future projects.

Mark Britton

Technical Manager for Digital Hardware
Alcatel-Lucent

At the start of our new project, there were several candidate CPUs for this product. After an extensive technical and commercial evaluation Dongbu HiTek selected the EnSilica eSi-1600 processor IP and peripherals set for our project.

While evaluating their IP, EnSilica’s team responded fast and professionally and had all the relevant experiences to support our project. Even though there is no local office in Korea, they supported in real time.

They understood our project requirements and we found the IP had very competitive performance. During developing our project, EnSilica team proposed some custom instruction specific to our application that saved important memory and power.

Their quality IP and support made our project on-time and a success. Through silicon verification, there was no CPU issue found and we were very pleased with the result.

We have decided to use EnSilica’s IP for our next project and we are confident that EnSilica will again provide the best service and support to make this another success project.

Haejin Song
Dongbu HiTek

To support our innovative wired packet processor sub-system IP, Posedge required multiple instantiations of an embedded processor with 3 different configurations. Due to the number of cores in the system the key selection criteria was a low gate-count and good code density as well as the requirement to support multi-core debug.

Of three processors evaluated, only the eSi-3250 exhibited the combination of functionality and flexible licensing that we needed to take our product development plans forward. EnSilica even created a special version of the eSi-3250, with the option to switch the caching capability on and off, giving us extra flexibility.

The eSi-3250 is also backed by a professional toolchain capable of supporting multi-core debug and validation. We used both the Windows and Linux version that are both easy to use and very stable. Posedge are now standardising on the eSi-3250 for all our wired/wireless networking IP solutions.

EnSilica have provided excellent support to our USA and Indian based teams through the complete design cycle as well as during silicon bring-up.

Chakra Parvathaneni
Vice-President of Marketing
Posedge Inc

Ensilica were knowledgeable, flexible and responsive to the needs of our system level design project. The contribution they made to modelling and evaluating the transceiver performance helped us greatly in achieving our goals and saved us a great deal of time.

Mike Baker
CEO

“EnSilica supported the verification and debug of the PNX8543 design. All members of their team were highly experienced, worked efficiently and contributed to the overall quality of the verification of this complex SoC. We intend to use their services again in the future.”

Iqbal Sharif
GM SoC Design Centre

“Having had a number of bids, we turned to EnSilica to provide a cycle-accurate C model of a major signal processing subsystem, a project for which timescale was critical.

EnSilica responded rapidly with a strong, well presented commercial and technical proposal, and were very easy to work with. Their work was first class, including comprehensive reporting and very professional deliverables. The project was completed to budget and on schedule. We would gladly work with them again.”

Michael Barkway
3G Product Manager

“EnSilica were selected by Thomson for the development of a very important subsystem- one of the most complex designs I have specified. The result was excellent (a few bugs were caused by ambiguities in the specification) and the value for money was even better (very autonomous work, reasonable requests for support). The true reason I recommend EnSilica is integrity. The contract was fixed price. They notified us early about their problems and then worked even harder to fix them in time. Contrary to other companies I have worked with, they did not play games to get more money. If they commit to a deadline and a budget, then they will deliver. If you have an RFQ for an important design task requiring senior engineers, you should send it to EnSilica.”

Xavier Duret
IC Technical Lead

“Dialog Semiconductor has used EnSilica to provide additional design and verification expertise on numerous projects connected with the development of high volume ICs.

EnSilica have applied a range of advanced techniques to address the verification challenges of these devices and support the successful delivery of high quality silicon. Throughout the projects, EnSilica have demonstrated commitment to the projects providing a mix of on-site / off-site support and the ability to adjust the size of the team based upon the demands of the projects - to allow projects to continue in parallel or provide additional resource at key phases of the projects to ensure that tapeout dates are achieved.

The use of a trusted and highly skilled design services partner to support our internal development team, provides several benefits for Dialog Semiconductor and has been a contributory factor in the delivery of successful designs to our customers.”

Stuart Levine
Director of Engineering - Digital Systems

“EnSilica engineers have provided a wide range of design service on a number of chip development projects for us and undertook key roles in the development of two complex SoC products. Imagination Technologies has been very pleased with the results produced by the EnSilica design team and we will continue to use them on future projects.”

Martin Ashton
VP Engineering, POWERVR Visual IP

“Navtech's objective was to develop a new version of a radar system to reduce size, lower cost, and improve reliability by integrating as much functionality as possible into a single device. A standard single-chip solution was not available and Navtech engaged EnSilica as a design partner to produce a custom design. EnSilica performed a study of the project requirements and advised Navtech that implementation in a single Altera Stratix II FPGA device was possible. Approximately 80% of the design was delivered by EnSilica and the project was completed on time and within budget. The result was a cost saving over the previous solution with significant size reduction and improvement in reliability. We highly recommend EnSilica and will be using them on future projects.”

Phil Avery
Managing Director

“EnSilica Ltd have designed and verified a complex Video Codec subsystem in VHDL for Elixent's reconfigurable D-Fabrix technology. EnSilica's design team has strong technical abilities and have proven to be very flexible and fully committed in meeting our technical and commercial goals.

We have been very pleased with EnSilica's performance and Elixent are likely to utilize EnSilica's team again for future projects. Therefore we are happy to recommend their services to others.”

Andy Elms
VP Customer Engineering, 2003 - 2006.

“EnSilica was recommended by electronics supplier EBV as a local and experienced FPGA design services company with an excellent reputation. We also tendered the work to other suppliers for comparison. We were impressed with the budgetary quote and the team's overall competence. After completing work on the transmit FPGA signal processing to budget and on time, we engaged EnSilica for the receiver design. This enabled us to replace an Analog Devices floating point DSP, SSRAM and SDRAM with a single low-cost Cyclone III FPGA, leading to a significant cost saving.

The deliverables from EnSilica have always been of the highest quality and the project management has been highly effective. We would recommend EnSilica without hesitation, and look forward to working with them again in the future. ”

Lee Richman
CEO