Cadence Design Systems, Inc. expanded its popular Tensilica® ConnX family of radar, lidar and communications DSPs with the debut of two new DSP IP cores for embedded processing in the automotive, consumer and industrial markets. The small, low-power Cadence® Tensilica ConnX 110 and ConnX 120 DSPs share a common instruction set architecture (ISA) with the proven high-performance ConnX B10 and B20 DSPs, offering customers even greater design flexibility. Together, these four DSPs cover a broad performance range from the low to the ultra-high-end, delivering scalable best-in-class, power, performance and area (PPA).

The 128-bit ConnX 110 DSP and 256-bit ConnX 120 DSP feature an N-way programming model and are fully compatible with the ConnX B10 and B20 DSPs, preserving software compatibility for easy migration. Like the rest of the Tensilica DSP portfolio, the ConnX 110 and ConnX 120 DSPs support the Tensilica Instruction Extension (TIE) language, which allows customers to tailor the instruction set, add specialized data types, and implement tightly integrated interfaces between the DSP and external logic. In addition, the new DSPs are supported by a comprehensive set of complex math library functions in the NatureDSP, Eigen and Radar libraries.

All ConnX DSPs are automotive-ready with full ISO 26262 compliance to ASIL-D with FlexLock or to ASIL-B. The Tensilica ConnX 110 and 120 DSPs offer the following features and capabilities: Optimized instruction set for radar, lidar and communications applications; 128-bit (ConnX 110) and 256-bit (ConnX 120) SIMD performance for complex math operations based on 8-, 16- and 32-bit fixed-point and half-, standard- and double-precision floating-point; Common instruction set and simplified programming model, allowing code to be written once and utilized across different SIMD widths within the ConnX family; Architecture optimized for small memory footprint and low-power signal processing; Optional acceleration operations for linear-feedback shift, convolutional encoding, single peak search and dual peak search; The ConnX 120 additionally offers Viterbi and Turbo decoders.