A Rythmic Measure of Success

When it comes to C synthesis successes, the literature – this blog included – is not short of examples quantifying time savings, productivity gains or improved area, timing or power consumption. Today I’d like to propose a new measure of success: “snaps”.

If you slowly raise your right hand and snap you fingers, you get one snap. Repeat this once and you’ll get two snaps. Now accelerate to get two snaps per second, and keep it going. Where is this leading to? Keep snapping! Keep snapping at this rate for the next 13 months and you’ll reach 70 million “snaps”.

70 million happens to be number of cell phones equipped with STMicroelectronics Imaging chips containing IP designed with Catapult C.

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The Imaging division of STMicroelectronics develops a wide-range of sensors, camera modules and image processors. STMicroelectronics’ image subsystems produce high image quality in compact form factors at a low cost and are mainly targeted at consumer products such as camera phones, PDAs, digital still cameras and optical mice. Within just a few years, ST designers led by Alexandre Cellier have gone from evaluating high-level synthesis to relying on Catapult C to create some of their most critical designs.

According to Massimo Manucuso, Image Processors Business Unit Manager at STMicroelectronics: 

70 million cell phones: that’s a pretty impressive number. If you consider the cost, area and power requirements for ASICs targeted at mobile devices, this speaks for the quality of results and the reliability STMicroelectronics was able to get from Catapult C. The full details of this story can be read here, and they are really worth reading.

Do you remember the last time you took a picture with your cell phone or video-skyped home? It might very well have been with the help of a Catapult C designed IP.

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