SoC enables ultra-low power wireless applications
It has been announced by CEVA, licensor of signal processing platforms and artificial intelligence processors for smarter, connected devices, that InPlay Technologies (InPlay), has licensed and deployed CEVA’s RivieraWaves Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) IP in its latest SwiftRadio SoC, targeting a range of markets for low power wireless applications, including wearables, healthcare, industrial, VR/AR and the IoT.
The SwiftRadio SoC will be showcased in CEVA’s meeting suite at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas from January 8th to 11th, 2019.
The SwiftRadio IN6xx is a highly-integrated single chip solution that combines the mature RW-BLE5 IP from CEVA together with InPlay’s ultra-low power RF and its proprietary multi-mode collaborative protocols, ensuring best-in-class performance with minimal power consumption for next-generation low power wireless networking applications. The high-performance RF design of the SwiftRadio SoC is a key advantage in wireless IoT applications. With industry-leading Rx sensitivity of -97.5dBm and very low power design (sleep current as low as 500nA), the SwiftRadio IN6xx SoC will support many new applications, especially for battery-powered products.
The SoC integrates a high-performance Arm Cortex-M4F microprocessor and subsystem with a floating-point processing unit, 256KB ROM and 64KB SRAM, as well as a rich set of peripherals such as I2C, UART, SPI, I2S, PDM, PWM and keyboard controllers. Developers can enjoy all the resources provided by this SoC platform to develop their wireless applications without adding an additional micro-controller and memory for system designs. Considering the ever-increasing security requirements of the Internet of Things, SwiftRadio SoC has built-in hardware security engines such as AES256, SHA256 and ECC256 and supports authenticated secure boot.
“The SwiftRadio IN6xx enables a paradigm shift in the Bluetooth Low Energy based wireless applications, opening up incredible new opportunities and use cases for this technology,” stated Jason Wu, CEO of InPlay. “Our extensive mixed signal and RF design expertise along with the low power architecture of CEVA’s RW-BLE5 IP and the advanced process technology from UMC has allowed us to deliver a best-in-class product for this burgeoning market.”
Steven Liu, Vice President of Corporate Marketing division at UMC, added: “UMC has developed a deep portfolio of specialty process technologies engineered to serve the fast-growing market for IoT, AI, Auto & Smartphone products, including sophisticated low power solutions that integrate embedded flash technology. We are pleased to partner with InPlay to enable the innovative features of their SwiftRadio SoC, which utilizes our 55nm ultra Low Power (uLP) embedded flash platform to address uLP market needs of portable products that require extended battery life while maintaining high performance.”
Aviv Malinovitch, Vice President and General Manager of the Connectivity Business Unit at CEVA, finished: “We are delighted to announce InPlay as a licensee for our Bluetooth 5 IP. We look forward to seeing the SwiftRadio products in the market, ensuring exceptional performance for power- and price-sensitive wireless IoT devices.”
