Cadence announce next-gen Tensilica Xtensa LX8 processor IP

Cadence Design Systems announced the Cadence Tensilica Xtensa LX8 processor platform, the foundation for the eighth generation of its industry-leading Xtensa LX processor family. The Xtensa LX8 processor offers significant new capabilities to address the increasing system-level performance and AI requirements of processor-based SoC designs while still providing customers energy-optimized Tensilica IP solutions. These robust enhancements are driven by the continued push for pervasive intelligence at the edge in the automotive, consumer and deeply embedded computing markets. The new Xtensa LX8 platform serves as the foundation for processor and system-level design innovations, including new DSP, multi-processor, interconnect and system-level IP products. Scaling processor performance to meet the ever-increasing performance demands of intelligent edge devices for mobile and automotive applications requires designers to look holistically at the system-level requirements. It is not enough to simply scale clock frequency or add additional processors, and factors such as data movement, memory bandwidth, latency and ease of integration all become more critical as SoC designs grow more complex. For example, recurrent and convolutional neural networks often include large datasets that must be quickly accessed from system memory in order to meet real-time requirements. Processor and DS...