About MicroUnity
MicroUnity, Inc. is a privately held company focused on providing Software Defined Broadband solutions. MicroUnity licenses its BroadMX core and associated BroadLib development environment to provide a powerful and flexible platform for physical layer and other performance intensive algorithms.
   
   
High-performance applications such as broadband communications, cryptography and image processing rely on a mix of processors and ASIC blocks. Because conventional CPUs and DSPs are unable to meet the demanding requirements, computation-intensive algorithms are put into ASIC blocks. Implementing these critical-path algorithms in ASIC blocks dramatically increases the development time, driving up cost and increasing time-to-revenue. Furthermore, this hybrid approach greatly decreases the flexibility to tune, repair or enhance the solution, thereby increasing risk. BroadMX solves this problem with innovative technology that provides the performance, flexibility and algorithmic headroom to replace ASIC blocks with software, enabling true Software Defined Broadband.
     
   
MicroUnity’s BroadMX enables Software Defined Broadband: physical layer and other computation-intensive algorithms implemented and upgraded in software. SOC implementations today use hardwired ASIC blocks for the physical layer and a CPU (or DSP) for higher layers. BroadMX replaces most of the hardwired ASIC blocks and leaves the existing CPU to handle the higher layers. Typically, the physical layer represents 90% of the computation but only 10% of the code, so leaving the existing CPU in place preserves the bulk of the existing code investment. As suggested in the diagram below, the most stable and optimized ASIC blocks may also be leveraged in conjunction with BroadMX.   
   
ASIC blocks add great cost and time to the development of an SOC. As shown in the breakdown below, R&D can represent more than 50% of a conventional SOC’s development cost, and the majority of the R&D is ASIC block implementation, debug and testing. BroadMX slashes R&D cost by replacing costly ASIC development with streamlined software development. This breakdown example includes one modification cycle: requiring a spin of the SOC in order to change an ASIC block, but handled by a software upgrade in BroadMX. If one or more such modifications are required, BroadMX can easily halve the development cost compared to a conventional SOC.
       

 
 
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