CEVA acquiert Hillcrest Labs et investit 10 M$ dans Immervision

Spécialisé dans les licences de plates-formes de traitement du signal et de processeurs d’intelligence artificielle pour objets connectés, le Californien CEVA a annoncé le 22 juillet l’acquisition Hillcrest Labs, un fournisseur de logiciels et de composants pour le traitement des données des capteurs dans les appareils grand public et IoT dont les produits équipent plus de 100 millions d’appareils.

Le 6 août, CEVA a récidivé en investissant 10 M$ dans le Québécois Immervision, lui garantissant des droits de licence exclusifs du portefeuille de logiciels de traitement d’images et de fusion de capteurs brevetés d’Immervision pour les caméras grand angle, utilisés dans les applications de surveillance, de smartphones, d’automobile, de robotique et grand public.

CEVA, a licensor of signal processing platforms and artificial intelligence processors for smarter, connected devices, announced the acquisition of the Hillcrest Laboratories business from InterDigital. Hillcrest Labs is a global supplier of software and components for sensor processing in consumer and IoT devices.

MEMS-based inertial and environmental sensors are used in an increasing number of devices, including smartphones, laptops, tablets, wireless earbuds, TV & remote controls, AR & VR headsets, drones, robots and many other consumer and industrial devices. With more than 15 years’ experience in sensor processing and more than 100 million devices shipped incorporating their technology to date, Hillcrest Labs is regarded as a leading innovator in the fusion of data from multiple sensors to enable intelligent systems. The resulting algorithms and software are used in sensors, such as Inertial Measurement Units (IMU), and end user products to enable contextual awareness and an enriched user experience for a variety of devices, such as the precise navigation of autonomous robots and drones.

Hillcrest Labs’ MotionEngine software supports a broad range of merchant sensor chips and is licensed to OEMs and semiconductor companies that can run the software on CEVA DSPs or a variety of RISC CPUs, including Arm Cortex-M and A series and RISC-V based cores. The MotionEngine software expands and complements CEVA’s smart sensing technology, which includes computer vision and AI processing for cameras and sound processing for microphones. As a result, CEVA DSP licensees now benefit from CEVA’s capabilities as a complete, one-stop-shop for processing all classes and types of sensors. Furthermore, the Hillcrest Labs software technology broadens CEVA’s software licensing engagements directly with OEMs and ODMs to enable the addition of a plethora of IMU-based software applications to their merchant SoCs, which adopt a royalty payment scheme based on devices rather than chips.

CEVA invests a $10 million in Immervision

CEVA has also entered into a strategic partnership agreement with privately owned Immervision, of Montreal, Canada. A developer and licensor of wide-angle lenses and image processing technologies, Immervision’s patented image enhancement algorithms and software technologies deliver dramatic improvements in image quality and remove the inherent distortions associated with the use of wide-angle cameras, particularly at the edges of the frame. Immervision’s technologies have shipped in more than 50 million devices to date through its broad customer base, which includes Acer, Dahua, Garmin, Hanwha, Lenovo, Motorola, Quanta, Sony and Vivotek.

Under the partnership agreement, CEVA made a $10 million technology investment to secure exclusive licensing rights to Immervision’s advanced portfolio of patented wide-angle image processing technology and software.