LONDON – Processor IP licensor Beyond Semiconductor d.o.o. has introduced the BA25 royalty-free 32-bit processor, which provides a performance improvement over the established BA22 RISC processor.

Beyond Semi (Ljubljana, Slovenia) classes the BA25 as roughly equivalent to an ARM Cortex-A7 or Cortex-A8 and is pitching the core at Linux and Android applications. The core includes an optional floating point unit.

The company claims the BA25 beats rival processors from ARM and others in some metrics and achieves the highest performance per square millimeter when compared to gigahertz application processors and offers the highest code density amongst application processors.

In addition Beyond Semi offers the IP for license with a single initial payment and without royalty. Beyond Semiconductor includes STMicroelectronics, Ericsson, Jennic – now part of NXP Semiconductor, Lattice Semiconductor and Omnivision amongst its licensees.

The BA25 has been proven in 65-nm silicon from foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and operates at clock frequencies of more than 800-MHz where it achieves 1360 DMIPS or 1.7-DMIPS/MHz. The BA25 supports out-of-order completion and advanced branch prediction. Its seven-stage pipelined architecture and optional two-level caches and memory management functions make it suitable for use as the main processor for systems running general-purpose operating systems like Linux or Android.

"The BA25 is - at never before seen cost/performance point - unlocking the potential for designers to tap into vast software ecosystem of Linux and Android operating systems, reducing software development costs while providing reacher experience to end users," said Matjaz Breskvar, CEO of Beyond Semiconductor, in a statement.

Beyond was co-founded in 2005 by Damjan Lampret, who had previously founded the OpenCores organization and led the development of the OpenRISC 32-bit processor architecture. Beyond reworked the OpenRISC architecture as BA1 and introduced the BA12 and BA14 cores. The BA2 instruction set is a refinement of BA1. However, BA2 remains relatively simple and compact, offering system area and energy-saving benefits, the company said. Programming is facilitated with the included C/C++ tool chain, Eclipse IDE, architectural simulator, and ported C libraries, RTOSs, and OSs.