Soft Machines Unveils VISC Processor and SoC Roadmap

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 07, 2015 – 

Soft Machines Inc., a Silicon Valley-based company that licenses and co-develops microprocessor and SoC products for IoT, mobile, networking and cloud markets, today revealed its VISC processor and SoC roadmap at the Linley Processor Conference. The world's first VISC processor, Shasta, will deliver unprecedented performance efficiency levels. Soft Machines also disclosed the highly scalable Mojave VISC SoC platform, which can be customized for smart mobile to server applications. Both Shasta and Mojave will be released in 2016.

Shasta delivers on the promise of the VISC architecture, which was unveiled in October 2014. The VISC architecture offers 2-3 times instructions per cycle (IPC) speedup, with up to 4 times performance per watt over today's leading-edge CPUs. The VISC architecture is based on virtual cores that permit one processor thread to operate concurrently on multiple processor cores, overcoming many single-core frequency and power-scaling issues, and multicore programming challenges. VISC also includes a virtual software layer that makes it portable to all CPU ISAs and ecosystems.

"Delivering the first VISC processor and SoCs is a major achievement for our pioneering microprocessor architecture," stated Soft Machines Co-founder, Vice Chairman and CEO Mahesh Lingareddy. "We have received several proposals and are working with customers to define Shasta VISC designs for multiple ISAs, virtual core configurations and SoC features to be delivered in 2016."

"The Shasta VISC processor is designed to deliver server-class performance within mobile power envelopes," said Soft Machines Co-founder, President and CTO Mohammad Abdallah. "Shasta can be configured for dual or quad 64-bit virtual cores, providing a step-function in performance per watt on platforms ranging from smartphones and tablets to laptops and servers."

About Soft Machines, Inc.

Soft Machines is a semiconductor company co-developing VISC architecture-based processor and SoC products for all major performance computing platforms and has raised close to $175 million in funding to date. Corporate headquarters are in Santa Clara, California, U.S., with operations in India and Russia. Soft Machines investors include Samsung Ventures, AMD, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, RVC, KACST, RUSNANO, TAQNIA and others.

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