About TOPS Systems

TOPS Systems Corporation was founded in 1999 in Tsukuba – Japan by Yukoh Matsumoto who intended to develop next-generation microprocessors in Japan and to spread them world-wide. Yukoh Matsumoto is the computer architect of TOPSTREAM™, a microprocessor IP that solves the three major walls of computer performance, such as the ILP wall, the memory wall, and the power wall.

TOPS Systems introduced its first test chip integrating five heterogeneous Multi-Cores, including patented distributed arbitration on-chip busses and multi-banked registers in June 2001. Soon after, in November 2001, the company received Takeda Entrepreneurship Award.

For over 10 years, TOPS Systems has been intensively working on Architecture-Algorithm Co-design and has developed several Heterogeneous Multi-Core Processors based on the TOPSTREAM™ architecture that enables  high performance and/or low-power with high constant performance never reached before with any existing architecture. For example, a ultra-low-power MPEG-4 Coded processor, a ultra-low-power Wi-Fi MAC & Base Band processor, and a Real-Time Ray Tracing corresponding to 800TFLOPS with only nine processor chips.

TOPS Systems is actively working on the next generation of Heterogeneous Multi-Core system called COOL  (Low-power and high-speed) System, which allows low-energy consumption, scalable functionality and performance only by increasing the number of chips, shorter software and hardware development cycles, more flexible manufacture, and improved cost performance. It consists of a (1) COOL chip, a low-power heterogeneous Multi-Core processor, (2) COOL software; highly efficient distributed software, and a (3) COOL interconnect; a scalable inter-chip wide bus system.

TOPS Systems’s objective is to contribute to the embedded system market by maximizing the impact of the TOPSTREAM™ architecture and COOL System technology. The potential applications for this technology are diverse, therefore we have structured our technology as a platform, enabling the quick development of application domain specific processors. Our business generates revenue by selling R&D, technical support, licensing software and hardware IP. As the revenue mix changes overtime with the technology, we will always seek to make our developing partners successful, as we grow successful as well.