Ceva Inc. is a publicly listed

semiconductor intellectual property In electronic design, a semiconductor intellectual property core (SIP core), IP core, or IP block is a reusable unit of logic, cell, or integrated circuit layout design that is the intellectual property of one party. IP cores can be licensed to ...

(IP) company, headquartered in

Rockville, Maryland Rockville is a city that serves as the county seat of Montgomery County, Maryland, and is part of the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The 2020 census tabulated Rockville's population at 67,117, making it the fifth-largest community in ...

and specializes in

digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on MOS integrated circuit chips. They are widely used in audio si ...

(DSP) technology. The company's main development facility is located in

Herzliya Herzliya ( ; he, הֶרְצְלִיָּה ; ar, هرتسليا, Hirtsiliyā) is an affluent city in the central coast of Israel, at the northern part of the Tel Aviv District, known for its robust start-up and entrepreneurial culture. In it h ...

, Israel and

Sophia Antipolis (wisdom), gr, (Ἀντίπολις, antipolis) ("opposite city" from its position on the opposite side of the Var estuary from Nice, also former name of Antibes, part of the technology park) , postal_code = 06220 (Vallauris), 06250 (Mo ...

, France.

History

Ceva Inc. was created in November 2002, through the combination of the DSP IP licensing division of

DSP Group DSP Group, Inc. was an American company that manufactured chipsets for VoIP, multimedia, and digital cordless applications. Founded in 1987 with headquarters in San Jose, California, DSP Group employed over 400 people at three US sites and offices ...

(based in Israel) and Parthus Technologies plc. Parthus was originally named Silicon Systems Ltd, and founded in

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

, Ireland, in 1993 by Brian Long and Peter McManamon, Parthus had its

initial public offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in 2000, just as the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

was bursting in May, 2000. The agreement was announced in April, 2002. The DSP Group had founded a US company originally called DSP Cores, Inc, and then Corage, Inc. in 2001. The company used the name ParthusCeva for the combination, and planned to list its shared on

Nasdaq The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...

with symbol PCVA and

London Stock Exchange London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange in the City of London, England, United Kingdom. , the total market value of all companies trading on LSE was £3.9 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Pau ...

symbol PCV. In December, 2003, the company dropped the "Parthus" from their name, and changed the sticker symbol to CEVA. In 2007, it sold its stake in Dublin-based company GloNav to

NXP Semiconductor NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXP) is a Dutch semiconductor designer and manufacturer with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company employs approximately 31,000 people in more than 30 countries. NXP reported revenue of $11.06 billion in ...

for a gain of $10.9 million. The company develops

semiconductor intellectual property core In electronic design, a semiconductor intellectual property core (SIP core), IP core, or IP block is a reusable unit of logic, cell, or integrated circuit layout design that is the intellectual property of one party. IP cores can be licensed to ...

technologies for multimedia and wireless communications. Ceva claimed the largest number of

baseband processor A baseband processor (also known as baseband radio processor, BP, or BBP) is a device (a chip or part of a chip) in a network interface controller that manages all the radio functions (all functions that require an antenna); however, this term i ...

s in 2010, and a 90% DSP IP market share in 2011. In July 2014 it acquired RivieraWaves SAS, a private company based in France. A 2018 document promoting Israeli innovations mentioned the company. In July 2019 it acquired the

Hillcrest Labs Hillcrest Labs was a sensor processing technology company that developed freespace motion-control technology and developed the first motion-controlled remote for television.''The Washington Post'' May 1, 2011. Steven OverlyAs the TV market shift ...

sensor fusion business from InterDigital. Also in July 2019, it entered into a strategic partnership with a Canadian company, Immervision to secure exclusive licensing rights for its patented

image processing An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensiona ...

and

sensor fusion Sensor fusion is the process of combining sensor data or data derived from disparate sources such that the resulting information has less uncertainty than would be possible when these sources were used individually. For instance, one could potentia ...

technologies for wide-angle cameras. On May 31, 2021, Ceva acquired Intrinsix, another semiconductor design company, for an estimated $33 million.

Technologies

Imaging and computer vision

Ceva develops technology for low-cost, low-power computational photography and

computer vision Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can gain high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to understand and automate tasks that the hum ...

. The company provides vision DSP cores, deep neural network toolkits, real-time

software libraries In computer science, a library is a collection of non-volatile resources used by computer programs, often for software development. These may include configuration data, documentation, help data, message templates, pre-written code and subro ...

, hardware accelerators, and algorithm developer ecosystems.

Deep learning

Ceva develops software for

deep neural network Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. De ...

s centered on the CEVA-XM computer vision and NeuPro AI cores. NeuPro is Ceva's family of low-power

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

processors for deep learning. NeuPro processors are self-contained, specialized AI processors, scaling in performance for a broad range of end markets including

IoT The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other com ...

, smartphones, surveillance, automotive, robotics, medical and industrial. This group of products offers high-performance configurations ranging from 2 Tera Ops Per Second (TOPS) for the entry-level processor and 12.5 TOPS for the most advanced configuration.

Wireless IoT

Wireless connectivity is often used in devices being created for the

Internet of things The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...

(IoT). Ceva develops

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

ultra-wideband Ultra-wideband (UWB, ultra wideband, ultra-wide band and ultraband) is a radio technology that can use a very low energy level for short-range, high-bandwidth communications over a large portion of the radio spectrum. UWB has traditional applicati ...

and

narrowband IoT Narrowband Internet of things (NB-IoT) is a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) radio technology standard developed by 3GPP for cellular devices and services. The specification was frozen in 3GPP Release 13 (LTE Advanced Pro), in June 2016. Othe ...

integrated wireless IoT platforms for integration into a

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

(SoC).

References

{{reflist Companies based in Silicon Valley Companies listed on the Nasdaq Computer companies of the United States

Embedded microprocessors A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...