Case Study: Ricoh achieves rapid custom DSP development with Synopsys Processor Designer

Processor Designer’s Automated Flow Enabled Ricoh to Quickly Develop a Custom DSP for Office Automation Products

Ricoh’s Core Technology R&D team needed a new application‑specific DSP for office automation products (copiers and printers) but lacked the old RTL, debugger toolchain and in‑house DSP development experience, and couldn’t afford the time a manual RTL design would have required.

Using Synopsys Processor Designer and the LISA language, Ricoh automated processor development and generated both RTL and a software tool flow. The LISA description (e.g., a 1,531‑line ALU) produced about 10,006 lines of RTL (~7x abstraction); the final DSP was 29,464 gates and ran at 200 MHz. The result was fast time‑to‑results with low engineering effort while meeting performance goals, and Ricoh plans to continue using Processor Designer.

Ricoh

Sadahiro Kimura

Senior R&D Engineer, Core Technology R&D Center