Sierra Wireless licenses Arasan's SDIO host controller IP core

SAN JOSE, USA: Arasan Chip Systems Inc. announced that Sierra Wireless, a leading provider of hardware, software, and connected services for mobile lifestyles and machine-to-machine communications, France, has licensed Arasan's Secure Digital Input/Output (SDIO) Host controller IP core to be integrated in its next generation SoC controller.

The machine-to-machine (M2M) communications market is experiencing an explosive growth with an estimated 200 million M2M devices being shipped by 2014 according to ABI research. Sierra Wireless provides hardware, software, and connected services for industrial embedded systems and M2M communications. Its product portfolio consists of mobile broadband devices, intelligent embedded modules, gateway routers and service platforms.

SoC designers at Sierra Wireless were looking for a scalable, standard bus interface that would meet their need for adding new functions to their base platform. The SDIO interface, based on a standard SD-bus met this requirement. Arasan, the world's leading provider of SD/SDIO/e.MMC IP cores was a natural choice as an IP provider for this critical interface.

"The soaring cost of SoC design forces system designers to build standard yet scalable SoC based platforms," said Somnath Viswanath, Product Marketing Manager at Arasan. "By integrating Arasan's proven SDIO Controller IP core, designers can support different functions on a standard platform based solution with sufficient interface performance to handle the most demanding applications - today and in the future".

Arasan's SDIO Host controller IP core natively processes all standard SDIO commands. It includes all of the latest security features of SD. The SDIO standard supports a wide range of functionality over its interface and can interface with removable cards built in the same form-factor as a SD card.

The SDIO controller can interface up to seven separate I/O functions and one memory function. An interrupt mechanism is supported which provides a faster response time when handling multiple functions over the SD bus.

Arasan provides a Total IP solution to enable the rapid integration of SDIO interface IP into SoCs, chipsets and application processors. This solution consists of RTL code, verification IP, software stacks, hardware platforms for development and validation - all backed by world-class customer support.