Ultra low-power wearables offer extended battery life of up to 30 hours

Cadence Design Systems has announced that Epson has switched from its previous GPS subsystem to one using the Cadence Tensilica Xtensa processor to extend the battery life of its wrist watch GPS running monitors from 14 hours to up to 30 hours when the GPS function is activated. Epson took advantage of the highly flexible Xtensa processor architecture to optimize the design for the best power, performance and area results, which greatly contributed to the overall subsystem power savings, says the company. "Ultra low-power features are critical for chip designs in our wearables segment," said Kenichi Ushiyama, general manager, Epson. "By adapting the Cadence Tensilica Xtensa processor to our needs, we were able to combine the control and GPS signal processing functions into one efficient core, saving power and area for this very space-constrained design." The Xtensa processor can be customized to handle both performance-intensive digital signal processing (DSP) and embedded control processing functions. The patented automated Xtensa Processor Generator allows designers to create more competitive and differentiated features with the lowest power by integrating control and signal processing in a single core.