portabledesign

Recently Portable Design’s Editor-in-Chief John Donovan managed to catch up with Tensilica’s CEO Chris Rowen. Tensilica’s programmable Extensa processors—long ensconced in Cisco routers—have more recently started appearing in large numbers in handsets from Motorola, Samsung and LG, thanks to licensees AMD/ATI, Samsung and NVIDIA. Since the interview took place the day before the annual ARM Developer’s Conference, the obvious first question was, “How do you (successfully) wrestle with an 800-lb. gorilla?”