SoC Fabric for IoT from Dolphin Integration

24th October 2016

Enaie Azambuja

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Launching any SoC on a highly competitive market demands a differentiation for which Hisense was searching for an ultra low-power solution to extend battery life-time of wireless-connected devices. Designing such an integrated circuit introduces new challenges: silicon area, power consumption and BoM cost must be aggressively reduced, while dealing with noise issues in a mixed-signal SoC embedding multiple power domains with diverse power modes.

Dolphin Integration’s SoC Fabric offering covers the SoC networks of clocks and regulated voltages, for a SoC designed with power domains, to deal with these new challenges.

“When we first discovered Dolphin Integration, we had in mind to acquire some vital Silicon IPs. Their intensive pre-sales support made us realise that they could provide us with a complete set of SoC Fabric IPs together with the transfer of know-how for implementing safely our low-power SoC.” explained Shawn Zhong, CEO of Hisense Microelectronics.

Dolphin Integration's SoC Fabric firstly stars their library of voltage regulators, compliant with the 8 rules of DELTA to enable mix-and-match from diverse regulator suppliers. Their second contribution automatically manages the in-rush current to share a regulator between multi-mode power domains with their patented "Transition Ramp Controllers". The third innovation was needed to build fast and safely the Activity Control Unit of a SoC with multi-mode power domains, thanks to a kit of modules in the always-on domain.

“We are pleased to announce Hisense as a licensee for our SoC Fabric IPs” said Frédéric Renoux, Sales Director at Dolphin Integration. “For their foundry partner and for Hisense themselves, our innovative and silicon-proven SoC Fabric reduces the Time-to-Market of leading edge and robust low-power SoCs at TSMC 55 nm uLP/uLPeF”.

For both the foundry and the IP provider, proving on silicon a SoC Fabric required the block-busting innovation of a Demochip: code-named TaiShan, it provides IP Compatibility Insurance (IPCI) for an assembly of Silicon IP in dynamic interplay while proving the robustness of such SoC Fabric IPs.