Those clever guys and gals at Sonics have announced that their on-chip communications solutions will support phase one of the new AMBA 4 protocol, which was unveiled this week by ARM.

This ensures that chip designers who currently use the AMBA 3 specification will have an easy migration path to AMBA 4 products as design upgrades are rolled out.  ARM indicates further enhancements to the specification will be available later this year.

Sonics is a premier supplier of intelligent on-chip communications solutions and helps designers eliminate memory bottlenecks and network challenges in complex, multi-layer embedded designs – including those found in mobile broadband, digital entertainment, home networking, wireless and automotive applications.  Sonics’ products provide support for AMBA protocols, including AMBA 3 AXI, AHB, and APB.

The new AMBA 4 specification provides increased functionality for media-rich, on-chip communications, broadening its applicability for bandwidth-intense SoCs.  The specification maximizes performance and power efficiency for complex designs.

"It’s important to ARM to have early adopters, such as Sonics, show their support for the new AMBA 4 specification," said Mike Dimelow, Director of Marketing, Processor Division, ARM.  "Partners like Sonics are important in enabling the rapid adoption of AMBA 4 to the benefit of all designers. Their support will help ensure that AMBA remains the de facto standard for on-chip communications for the foreseeable future."

"We want to give designers peace of mind that AMBA 4 specification-compatible products will be available when they need them as they set their next-generation design initiatives," said Jack Browne, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Sonics.  "It was natural for Sonics to partner with ARM to offer early support for such a critical design standard."

About Sonics
The folks at Sonics are pioneers of network-on-chip (NoC) technology and offer SoC designers a humongous portfolio of intelligent, on-chip communications solutions.  Sonics' products optimize memory access, seamlessly manage on-chip network traffic, accelerate system performance, and reduce power consumption in SoCs with advanced voice, data and video features – including those found in home entertainment, networking, wireless, and mobile devices.

With their broad array of silicon-proven IP, the folks as Sonics helps designers eliminate memory bottlenecks associated with complex, high-speed SoC design, streamline and unify data flows and solve persistent network challenges in embedded systems with multiple cores.

For more information, please visit www.sonicsinc.com and www.sonicsinc.com/blog.