Vol 21, Issue 05 January 29, 2007 MPR's 20th Anniversary By Jim McGregor

As Microprocessor Report enters its 20th year of publication, we want to thank you for helping to make the newsletter a critical resource for evaluating new microprocessors and related technologies. Market changes over the past few years have increased the level of innovation in our industry to new heights. Microprocessor Report began its journey when the most important questions facing designers were the differences between CISC and RISC and the relative advantages of a handful of processors, such as x86, MIPS, SPARC, and 68000. MPR provided insight into the processors' ISA and implementation features. It predicted improvements in architecture and implementation.

Times have changed, and in embedded applications, the processor has become just a component, albeit the most important one. Today's issues are more complex and more exciting than ever before. The questions of the day are no longer just what processor architecture and implementation is better, because there is no longer just one obvious unique solution to an application. The processor of yesterday is morphing into an all-powerful device as designers introduce DSP functions into general-purpose engines and vice versa. In the embedded area, the single high-frequency processor is competing with processor arrays and with configurations mixing accelerators and processors. Configurable architectures and FPGAs have become important tools used by designers. In just the past year, mainstream computing has shifted to dual-core processors, and a few days ago, Intel demonstrated its first quad-core system at CES.

New market requirements are driving the need for massively parallel processing, and mobile video is spawning the development of a new generation of media, baseband, and server processors. Even more innovation is in store for 2007 as an entirely new generation of DSPs comes to life. Multicore processors will appear in mainstream servers and desktop PCs. The industry will begin a critical transition to 45nm fabrication technology, with several diverging strategies.

Ahead of the evolving markets, In-Stat will continue enhancing Microprocessor Report to predict and analyze these changes to anticipate the needs of our readers. In the recent past, MPR has introduced DSP and power-consumption analysis through articles, seminars, and tutorials, to assist designers in quickly obtaining the knowledge they need for their work. MPR will continue to provide in-depth analysis of new DSPs, multicore processors, and system chip sets, as well as the critical technologies enabling their development and deployment, such as software-development support, bus communication, design methods, virtualization, and new manufacturing processes. We will describe and analyze the changing usage models in computing, consumer electronics, and communications. We will review past predictions about the evolution of microprocessor technology and the industry in order to evaluate their accuracy and foresee the changes yet to come.

In addition to providing the insight of our technology analysts, Microprocessor Report will offer additional insight from In-Stat's market analysts and technical experts throughout the industry. Look for these enhancements during the new year. We will also redesign our website, modify our Processor Watch electronic newsletter to better summarize the abstracted articles, and move Microprocessor Forum from its usual fall dates to May 22 and 23, 2007, in San Jose, California. In place of the usual fall Forum, we are considering a different type of event.

Throughout these changes, our analysts and staff members will remain dedicated to providing the best independent source for analysis and information on the processors and related components that are driving the changes in the semiconductor and electronics industries. More than ever, we will emphasize in-depth technical coverage and analysis instead of the breaking-news coverage provided by other publications. We don't intend to publish as frequently as the daily and weekly news-oriented publications, since our mission is to provide answers to the questions arising after you read the dailies. We have consistently given our readers deeper technology coverage for 20 years, and that's one thing about Microprocessor Report that won't change.

Jim McGregor
In-Stat Principal Analyst and Research Director
of the Enabling Technologies Group