DSP Start-up Snags Funding, Targets 5G

　　Paris-based digital signal processing IP fabless start-up VSORA this week announced it raised$1.7 million in series A funding for what it says is a new approach to DSP needed to address the performance and complexity requirements of 5G and other applications.

　　VSORA was founded in 2015 by DSP engineers from the former mobile TV chip developer DiBcom,now part of Parrot.It says its DSP architecture and development platform target wireless mobile applications and boost computing power,optimize power consumption and system performance,and reduce silicon footprint.

　　"With the coming 5G mobile standard,traditional DSP technology will run out of steam on multiple levels.Our aim is to become the reference point for state-of-the-art DSP applications,"said Khaled Maalej,VSORA’s CEO.

　　Maalej said the company enables the same piece of code to combine the embedded software and the digital signal processing elements of the system.He said this addresses an issue that has faced the industry for years:How can you make the embedded software engineers communicate with the DSP engineers more easily and share the same code?

　　“Typically,engineers would have to write the algorithms at MATLAB level and then that code would have to be combined with the embedded software,"Maalej said."But as the complexity of the baseband increases,and bit rate increases significantly—especially with the opening up of the millimetre wave band for 5G for example—then you need a different approach and higher performance DSP.”

　　Maalej said VSORA's goal“was always to create a new architecture that provides a common platform for the DSP and the embedded software,and brings programmability and flexibility.”

　　The DSP IP from VSORA includes its MPU-801 single core processor as well as a higher performance version,the MPU-3201,both of which can be used as part of multi-core processor configurations.The company says the processing power available eliminates the need for specific co-processors,with customizable floating point ALUs.It allows the mixing of signal processing with embedded software code,with one code for the data-link layer and physical layer,and codes automatically separated for the DSP and the CPU.The platform enables mapping of the algorithms to individual cores,and the interconnect between the cores is automatically handled.

　　The company was incorporated by Maalej and three other former Dibcom engineers in September 2015.VSORA’s product development was self-funded together with loan support from bpifrance,the French public sector financing agency for innovation.

　　"Without the bpifrance loan,it would have been harder to complete the first phase of R&D and make our first release of the product in Q4 2017,"Maalej said.

　　The$1.7 million investment was provided by Omnes Capital,Partech Ventures and angel investors.It will be used to expand VSORA’s R&D and build sales channels in the United States and Asia.

　　"VSORA’s solution will have a transformative impact on the performance of DSP chips,"said Boris Golden,principal at investor Partech Ventures,in a press statement.“We believe that VSORA will become a strategic enabler of all 5G communications in the near future."