Tensilica Licensees ship 2bn IP Cores

Tensilica's licensees are now shipping at a run rate of approximately 800 million Tensilica DPU IP cores per year, which is more than a 50 percent increase over the run rate announced in June 2011, when the company reached its one billionth core shipment. Tensilica also announced that license revenue for the previous four quarters (ending June 30, 2012) has continuously surpassed that of any other DSP (digital signal processor) IP licensing companies by an average margin of 25 percent. "IP companies get revenue from two sources: licensing and royalties," stated J. Scott Gardner, senior analyst at The Linley Group. "Licensing revenue is a leading indicator of future royalty revenue. Often it takes two to three years for royalties to come in after a new design license is signed. So this rise in licensing revenue bodes well for future royalty revenue for Tensilica." "Our growth has exceeded our plans and we reached the two billion milestone a quarter ahead of our projections," stated Jack Guedj, Tensilica's president and CEO. "Similarly, we've seen continuing and sustained increases in license revenues as more and more tier 1 semiconductor and systems companies adopt our DPU/DSP products. Our growth is due to the fact our DPUs provide better performance/power/area than classic DSPs and are scalable from function-specific micro signal and control processors to large general-purpose DSPs." Tensilica attributes the growth in unit shipments to new designs ramping to volume production in smartphones, digital televisions, tablets, personal and notebook computers, and storage and networking applications.