UltraSoC today announced that C-SKY Microsystems Co Ltd (“C-SKY”), a China-based semiconductor company acquired by the Alibaba Group in April, has licensed UltraSoC’s embedded analytics technology for use in C-SKY’s China-developed system-on-chip (SoC) products. The companies plan a long-term partnership, with the first products targeted at sophisticated artificial intelligence-based applications.

China’s indigenous semiconductor industry is gaining a reputation for increased innovation and sophistication. C-SKY will employ UltraSoC’s embedded analytics technology to enable advanced product developments based on its own proprietary CPU technology, and the emerging RISC-V open standard.

Rupert Baines, UltraSoC CEO, commented: “China’s semiconductor industry is growing rapidly and companies such as C-SKY are demonstrating how home grown IP can enable innovative product design. Our partnership with C-SKY provides benefits throughout the electronics value chain: for C-SKY’s engineers; for product designers and manufacturers building C-SKY’s products into final systems; for software developers; and ultimately for end customers who get better, more reliable products. We’re proud to be working with C-SKY to help build a new generation of semiconductor products.”

Dr Jianyi Meng, vice president and chief technology officer for C-SKY, added, “UltraSoC understands perfectly the value of providing embedded insights to designers integrating our CPUs into demanding environments – and even to the end users of those systems. The functionality provided by UltraSoC’s embedded analytics enhances the C-SKY offering.”

The partnership between C-SKY and UltraSoC allows chip and system designers to access holistic and intimate information about the internal operation of an SoC and about the product or system into which it is embedded. This is particularly valuable for advanced applications based on artificial intelligence (AI), which require multiple processor cores to work with shared data, and incorporate network-style interconnects (networks-on-chip, or NoCs). Such an environment presents a substantial challenge in terms of ensuring that processors are used efficiently, that shared data remains coherent, and that interconnect transports data effectively: on-chip analytics substantially simplifies this task.

C-SKY develops a range of CPU cores with applications ranging from smart devices for the Internet of Things, to digital audio and video, information security, network and communications, industrial control and automotive electronics. Its proprietary C-SKY embedded CPU cores feature ultra-low power, high performance, high code density and ease of use.