CEVA FAQ

1. What is Intellectual Property?
2. What are the key trends in the Semiconductor Intellectual Property (SIP) industry?
3. What is your IP offering?
4. What are your products?
5. What are your target markets?
6. Who are your customers?
7. Who are your partners?
8. What is Bluetooth, H.264, DSP?
9. Where is CEVA based?

1. What is Intellectual Property?

Within the semiconductor industry, CEVA is known as a Silicon IP company. We focus on design and development of cores and systems that underpin SoCs (systems-on-chip). Our assets are our people, patents, and experience. We do not manufacture the chips ourselves. Instead, we license our technology to leading technology companies who either manufacture chips in-house or buy chips from foundry partners.

Our revenue mix contains IP licensing fees, per-unit royalties and support fees. We have built a strong network of licensing partners who rely on our technology to deploy their silicon solutions. Today our technologies are widely licensed and power some of the world’s leading wireless and consumer electronics brands including Atmel, Broadcom, EoNex, Freescale, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Infineon, Macronix, Marvell, Maxim, National Semiconductor, nVidia, Oki, Philips, Renesas, ROHM, Samsung, Sharp, Silicon Laboratories, Sony, Spreadtrum, STMicroelectronics, Thomson, VIA, Zoran and more. In 2005 our licensees shipped over 130 million CEVA-powered chips, an increase of 8% over 2004 shipments of 106 million units.

2. What are the key trends in the Silicon Intellectual Property (SIP) industry?

The semiconductor industry is moving toward system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions using proven, industry-standard, third-party SIP. SIP is increasingly being driven by:

1. Open-licensable IP. The advantages of speed, flexibility, interoperability, and lowest cost-of-ownership has seen the semiconductor industry shift from proprietary, in-house solutions to licensing open, industry-standard DSP technology.

2. Design Productivity. The convergence of computing, communications, and mobility has created a massive market opportunity. However, it has also posed an enormous design-productivity challenge. Proven SIP, such as DSP cores, open-frameworks, and integrated applications, are fundamental to overcoming the design-productivity challenge.

3. What is CEVA's IP offering?

CEVA addresses the requirements of the embedded communications and multimedia markets by designing and licensing programmable DSP cores, system platforms and serial communications technologies which enable the rapid design of embedded SoCs targeting smart, connected portable devices. Our IP offering includes. a family of programmable DSP cores with a range of cost, power-efficiency and performance points; associated SoC system - platform (the essential SoC hardware and software infrastructure integrated with the core); and a portfolio of complete system-solutions in the areas of video processing, audio processing, speech processing, VoIP communications, Bluetooth communications and serial communications technololgies. Our services division assists our customers in the deployment of their CEVA based solutions.

Given the complexity of applications for DSP, there is increasing industry demand to license complete solutions that integrate the DSP core, the associated SoC infrastructure and the particular application logic and software as it is usually not cost-effective for most semiconductor companies and designers to develop the technology in-house. Therefore, companies increasingly rely on licensing other intellectual property, such as DSP cores, from third parties.

4. What are CEVA's Products?

We are the leading licensor of DSP cores and communication solutions to the semiconductor industry. We offer a family of programmable DSP cores, associated sub systems platforms and a portfolio of application platforms including multimedia, audio, Voice over Packet (VoP), Bluetooth, Serial Attached SCSI and Serial ATA (SATA). Our services division assists our customers in the deployment of their CEVA-based solutions.

CEVA DSP Cores

We market a family of synthesizable programmable DSP cores, each delivering a different balance of performance, power dissipation and cost, allowing customers to select a core ideally suited to their target application. The ability to match processing power to the application is an important consideration when designers select a DSP supplier. Our family of cores is largely software compatible, meaning that software from one core can be applied to another which significantly reduces investment in code development, tools and designer training. For more information, visit our DSP Core product section.

We deliver our technology in two ways: either in the form of a mask-level chip layout (called a hard core), or in the form of a hardware description language definition (known as a soft core or a synthesizable core). All CEVA DSP cores are soft cores that can be manufactured on any process using any physical library, and all are accompanied by a complete set of tools and an integrated development environment. An extensive third-party network supports CEVA DSP cores with a wide range of complementing software and platforms. In addition, we provide the necessary Development Boards, Software Development Tool kits and software debug tools, which facilitate system design, debug and software development.

CEVA System Platforms

Designers today face escalating design costs and shrinking design timelines combined with ever decreasing probability of right-first-time silicon. To further reduce the cost, complexity and associated risk in bringing products to market, CEVA has developed a range of sub system platforms which combine selected hardware peripherals which are essential to designers deploying CEVA DSP cores. Our sub system platforms contain a collection of peripherals such as on-chip data and program memory controllers, high-performance DMA controller, Buffered Time Division Multiplexing Port (BTDMP), high-throughput Host Processor Interface (HPI), and Power management unit. These hardware platforms are designed to be easily integrated into existing System-on-Chips (SoCs), providing standard protocols and interfaces such as AHB and APB bridges for Host-DSP efficient communications. For more information, visit our System Platforms section.

CEVA Application Platforms

CEVA Application Platforms consist of a family of application-specific full system solutions. Platforms typically integrate a CEVA DSP core, hardware subsystem and application-specific (e.g. video processing) software and logic. Our family of platforms spans multimedia (audio, video, image), voice (VoIP), Bluetooth and high-speed serial communications (SATA, SAS). CEVA IP Platforms fundamentally reduce the complexity, cost of ownership, and time-to-market for products developed utilizing the platforms. For more information, visit our CEVA Applications section.

5. What are your target markets?

We target our portfolio of DSP cores, system and application platforms at eight principal markets:

• Wireless Handsets - CEVA is the world’s leading licensor of DSP technology to the wireless industry. Hundreds of millions of cellphones have deployed CEVA technology. Today six (6) of the world’s top ten wireless handset companies utilize the ultra power efficient high-performance CEVA DSP cores. With complete solutions spanning Modem and Application Processing platforms and Bluetooth technologies, the portfolio of CEVA IP greatly accelerate time-to-market, functionality and performance of next generation handsets.
  
  
• Portable Multimedia Players - CEVA’s portable multimedia solutions integrate a DSP core, system platform and comprehensive software codecs that support all industry audio, video and imaging standards in a silicon proven platform. Architected for ultra low-power, minimal memory requirements and highest levels of resolution, the solutions offer the industries only complete software programmable multimedia platform.
  
  
• Portable Audio - CEVA offers a complete, highly-integrated, low-power, low-cost audio platform for consumer devices, including wireless handsets, portable audio players and home entertainment systems. CEVA-Audio™ combines several CEVA-developed technologies including CEVA-TeakLite-II™, the new and enhanced version of the widely-adopted CEVA-TeakLite™ DSP core, a cache memory subsystem, audio peripherals, a comprehensive set of audio codecs and complete tool chain support.
  
  
• Home Entertainment - CEVA is a leader in application and multimedia solutions targeting a broad range of digital and home entertainment products such as set-top boxes, Digital TVs and audio receivers. CEVA enables the home entertainment industry with a range of DSP cores providing storage, automotive, telecom networking and location solutions.
  
  
• Storage - CEVA technologies are incorporated annually in tens of millions of disk drives, DVD players and recorders. CEVA technologies are chosen for a combination of high-performance with small die size and low power consumption. CEVA storage offerings include DSP cores for magnetic and optical drive controllers as well as high speed serial comms, including SATA and SAS (system interconnects through physical and transport and link layers).
  
  
• Automotive - Innovation in today’s vehicles is principally driven by microelectronics spanning diverse areas such as navigation, wireless communication, handsfree systems, multimedia entertainment and digital radio. CEVA provides a portfolio of connectivity, multimedia and Blueotth solutions, powered by CEVA DSPs, for next generation telematic applications.
  
  
• Telecom/Networking - CEVA provides Networking and Telecommunications semiconductor vendors a broad range of solutions targeting IP-phones, Residential Gateways and high-speed serial communication. Complete VoIP, Giga Ethernet and Serdes silicon verified solutions from CEVA are architected to reduce the cost and time-to-market for Telecom and Networking products.
  

6. Who are your customers?

We have licensed our DSP cores, DSP-based subsystems and application-specific platforms to leading semiconductor companies throughout the world. These companies incorporate our IP into application-specific chips or custom-designed chips that they manufacture, market and sell to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of a variety of electronic products. We also license our DSP cores and DSP-based subsystems and application-specific platforms to OEMs directly. Included among our licensees are the following customers; Atmel, Broadcom, EoNex, Freescale, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Infineon, Macronix, Marvell, Maxim, National Semiconductor, nVidia, Oki, Philips, Renesas, ROHM, Samsung, Sharp, Silicon Laboratories, Sony, Spreadtrum, STMicroelectronics, Thomson, VIA, Zoran and more.

7. Who are your partners?

Long-term partnerships have been a cornerstone of our success both from a business and a technical standpoint. Today, the CEVAnet partnership program partners CEVA with a wide range of companies in our industry. View our CEVAnet partner list.

8. What is Bluetooth, H.264, DSP?

See our glossary of terms

9. Where is CEVA based?

The company is headquartered in San Jose, California. We have two principal development centers in Israel and Ireland, plus world-wide sales and customer support offices. For a full list of locations and contact information, visit our locations page.