Solutions » What are CSSPs?

What are CSSPs?

Customer Specific Standard Product (CSSP) is a combination of Proven System Blocks and programmable fabric.

Features and Benefits:

  • Offers designers the integration and flexibility to accelerate time-to-market and differentiation in the mobile market
  • Provides a unique combination of hard logic and ultra-low power programmable fabric based on our patented ViaLink® technology for adapting CSSPs as market conditions change, resulting in longer time-in-market
  • Includes small footprint packaging, or die, that maximizes printed circuit board (PCB) real estate, hence reducing Bill of Materials (BOM) costs
  • Enhances processors to support emerging new standards and customer feature requirements, resulting in improved user experience

QuickLogic CSSP Platform Concept

QuickLogic CSSP Solution Concept

Answers to Mobile Market Designer Challenges

QuickLogic® Corporation helps mobile product system architects and designers face these increasingly difficult design challenges:

  • Desire to move from mass production to mass customization
  • More complex products with varying feature sets
  • Shrinking product development schedules and budgets
  • Consumers’ insatiable demands for more features with longer battery life and small product size

These challenges require a more flexible approach to system design once an application or baseband processor has been chosen.

CSSP Solution

QuickLogic solves these challenges with our award winning PolarPro®, ArcticLink® and ArcticLink® II VX Solutions Platform families. These solution platforms can be configured to support a varied array of functionality with proven system blocks that allow for unique custom designs or product variations in all of these market segments:

CSSP Solution Platforms

ArcticLink® II VX Solution Platform Family

arcticlink

The ArcticLink II VX family is the first solution platform family optimized for display path functionality in handheld, battery powered devices. All solution platforms in this family embed a hardwired, 2.0 version of the Visual Enhancement Engine (VEE) Proven System Block (PSB). Furthermore, a variety of display interface PSBs can be embedded in the ArcticLink II VX solution platforms, including Mobile Display Digital Interface (MDDI), Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI, RGB, CPU-Bus (i80 and EBI), and others.

>> More info on ArcticLink II VX solution platform family

ArcticLink® Solution Platform Family

arcticlink

The ArcticLink family has highly integrated, customizable solution platforms designed specifically to meet the unique high-speed connectivity requirements of handheld devices. The ArcticLink solution platforms are used by QuickLogic to embed Proven System Blocks such as USB 2.0 Hi-Speed Host, Device and On-The-Go (OTG), SDIO/SD/MMC, high speed UARTs, keyboard control, SPI and I2C ports, advanced clock management and others.

>> More info on ArcticLink solution platform family

PolarPro® & PolarPro® II Solution Platform Family

The award winning PolarPro families of programmable solution platforms, including PolarPro and PolarPro II, were purposely architected to meet the interconnect and system logic requirements of power sensitive and portable applications. These platform families offer a spectrum of functionality by embedding Proven System Blocks (PSBs) such as SDIO/SD/MMC, high speed UARTs, keyboard control, SPI and I2C ports, advanced clock management and others.

>> More info on PolarPro solution platform family

The ArcticLink and PolarPro Solutions Platform’s programmable fabric customizable building blocks provide a compact, single-chip solution that:

  • Reduces BOM costs
  • Saves board space
  • Eases system-level design trade-offs
  • Improves the end product’s time-to-market and time-in-market

What is a CBB?

A customizable building block (CBB) is a unit of measurement that represents the on-chip logic that can be used to implement a variety of proven system blocks such as SDIO, PCI, IDE, CE-ATA and NAND Flash controller, to name a few, or custom logic or other system level functions.

QuickLogic Proven System Block Options

QuickLogic Proven System Block Options

Click here for the complete list of Proven System Block options

CSSP Packages

In the mobile market, semiconductor package size is a critical requirement and often will impact whether a differentiating feature will be added to a product. QuickLogic partners with industry leading packaging vendors and makes significant investment package technology development to ensure we are delivering CSSPs optimized for the cost, board space and reliability needs of the mobile market. Figure 3 illustrates the various packaging types QuickLogic supports today including small foot print BGA packages and wafer level CSP.

Packaging types

Packaging types

CSSP Software Drivers

Development teams are continually finding that successful product delivery is highly dependent on the availability of robust software, including drivers, middleware and applications. QuickLogic understands this and firmly believes that a “solution” is more than just a semiconductor device – a “solution” includes software drivers that can be integrated seamlessly into a company’s board support package (BSP). QuickLogic’s system software team has experience delivering drivers for Windows CE, Windows Mobile , Android and Linux operating systems.

Software drivers supported by QuickLogic’s CSSP Solution

Software drivers supported by QuickLogic’s CSSP Solution

CSSP Development Flow

Close collaboration between QuickLogic and our customers and partners ensures the products delivered to market meet the expectations. QuickLogic Customer Solutions Architects (CSAs) work with our customers at the system architecture level in order to define a CSSP specification. Then, QuickLogic’s System Solution Group (SSG) implements the CSSP and works on-site with customers to ensure a successful integration into the final system. Figure 4 below illustrates this flow.







Development Flow