Embedded Processor Watch

Editor: Jim Turley

In This Issue:

• - Motorola and Lucent to Share DSPs
• - Motorola Cans Core+, FPGA Business
• - Sega Announces Katana as Dreamcast
• - HP's Embedded Java Rides On Four RTOS's
• - Industry Resources: Stanford Lowers Its Admission Requirements
• - About Embedded Processor Watch

Motorola and Lucent to Share DSPs

Motorola and Lucent Technologies have decided to exchange DSP architectures and collaborate on the development of new ones. The first new cores to spring from this alliance are due in 1999 and will position both companies to compete more strongly against DSP dominator Texas Instruments.

The next-generation DSP cores will be designed at a jointly owned design center in Atlanta called Star Core, which will open in 3Q98. The DSP architecture will be fully defined, and the first core implementation will be ready for use, by mid-1999. Chips based on the new architecture are expected from both companies before the end of that year.

Defining a new DSP and designing a core implementation generally takes much longer than 12 months, and this is exactly the case with Star Core. Lucent and Motorola started collaborating on their joint DSP design more than a year ago; the formation of Star Core simply formalizes their efforts. The new DSP family will be incompatible with existing DSPs from either company. Assembly-level source translators will be created, but no binary compatibility will exist among any of the companies' DSP families. Within the new architecture, different core implementations will also exist, with some cores implementing just a subset of the features.

The deal is similar to the one struck between Hitachi and SGS-Thomson (see Microprocessor Report 12/29/97, p. 10), whereby the two companies will jointly define an instruction-set architecture but separately develop and market the derived devices. Motorola and Lucent executives cited the usual market targets for their new chips: communications, transportation, and consumer electronics.

The two companies have also agreed to cross-license three existing families. Motorola gets access to Lucent's DSP16000 architecture, while Lucent gains a license to the 56800 and MCore designs (see Microprocessor Report 10/27/97, p. 12). The Star Core agreement will not alter product roadmaps for any of these families; Motorola's stated intent to add DSP capabilities to MCore will proceed from the Star Core facility.

The agreement, which has a four-year life span, suggests that more than one new DSP family may be created from the union. After the first architecture is fully defined, and one or two core implementations finished, the group may move on to another new architecture in a short time.

While the agreement is a big deal for both companies, it may not qualify as a "revolutionary announcement in the history of the semiconductor industry," in the words of Hector Ruiz, president of Motorola's chip operations. By joining forces, the #2 and #3 DSP vendors can better head off TI as it moves inexorably toward DSP market dominance. Worldwide unit sales and revenues of DSPs are growing even faster than are those of microprocessors; by combining their efforts early, Motorola and Lucent stand a better chance of sharing a strong position going into the next decade.

Motorola Cans Core+, FPGA Business

Scant months after announcing its plans for microprocessors with programmable logic (see Microprocessor Report 2/16/98, p. 10), Motorola has killed the entire product family and disbanded its staff in Phoenix (Arizona) and Manchester (U.K.).

The first Core+ part, to be named MPACF250, was to have appeared in 3Q98 and integrated a ColdFire processor core with several thousand gates of programmable logic. The 'F250 was to be the first in a series of chips that borrowed Motorola's fine-grained FPGA architecture. Now, that architecture and the proposed series of Core+ parts have been abandoned.

The combination of microprocessor and logic is an interesting one. Traditional FPGA makers like Xilinx and Altera have addressed this niche by offering synthesizable CPU cores that can be placed and routed using their standard programmable parts. Motorola's approach, which would have combined a fixed CPU core and an array of programmable logic on the same die, would have provided better CPU performance while leaving all the user logic free. Although Motorola abandoned its product line before it got started, the concept is still sound, and other companies may pursue it more vigorously.

Sega Announces Katana as Dreamcast

Returning from Saturn's obit (er, orbit), Sega revealed the first details of its next-generation home video-game console. Officially called Dreamcast, the system that was previously code-named Katana (and Dural and Black Belt before that) repairs many of the mistakes that cost Saturn its life in North America, while repeating others.

As expected, Dreamcast will use Hitachi's SH7750 microprocessor (see Microprocessor Report 12/29/97, p. 12), NEC's PowerVR graphics controller (see Microprocessor Report 7/14/97, p. 5), an ARM-based Yamaha sound chip, and a modified version of Microsoft's Windows CE operating system (see Microprocessor Report 6/2/97, p. 5).

Although the SH7750 processor at the heart of Dreamcast is a commercial, off-the-shelf part, sources indicate the chip includes 4-6 secret instructions known only to Sega and its licensed software developers.

The single-processor design will make Dreamcast far easier to program (and manufacture) than the four-processor Saturn it replaces. It also cuts Hitachi's volume to Sega drastically, although revenue may not decrease much considering how inexpensive Saturn's SH-2 chips have become.

The SH7750's new 3D geometry instructions (see Microprocessor Report 10/28/96, p. 32) will be complemented by a second-generation PowerVR accelerator designed by Videologic and built by NEC (see Microprocessor Report 3/9/98, p. 16). This puts NEC in the enviable position of supplying two out of three video-game titans. In addition to Dreamcast's graphics, the company also provides CPUs and Rambus-compatible DRAMs to Nintendo. Only the Sony PlayStation has eluded NEC's grasp.

Dreamcast goes on sale November 20 in Japan but won't be available in North America until almost a year later. At first, Sega will offer only five titles for Dreamcast, one of the shortcomings that doomed Saturn. But because the system relies on Microsoft's Win32 and DirectX APIs, porting games back and forth between Dreamcast and PCs will be far easier than it is with any current game console. After being singed by Saturn, wary software developers are much more likely to write games for Dreamcast knowing that a PC version will be relatively easy to produce. Conversely, PC programmers can enter the console market with much less effort than before. Technical issues aside, Sega will probably still enforce an exclusivity period on Dreamcast titles before they are made available on the PC.

Dreamcast's modem and Internet protocols position the box as an alternative to WebTV and other Internet appliances. Its low selling price (expected to be about $200 in Japan) and obvious alternative function make the system far more interesting to most consumers than a single-purpose Internet appliance or set-top box. Whether buyers choose WebTV or Dreamcast, Microsoft wins either way.

HP's Embedded Java Rides On Four RTOS's

Hewlett-Packard has announced the first four licensees of its Java runtime environment for embedded systems (see Microprocessor Report 4/20/98, p. 8). Integrated Systems (ISI), QNX, Lynx, and Microware have all agreed to integrate the HP product with their respective real-time operating systems (pSOS, QNX, LynxOS, and OS-9, respectively). The deal is the first of its kind for HP and a blow to Sun's JavaOS for Consumer and JavaOS for Embedded alternatives (see Microprocessor Report 4/20/98, p. 8).

As we reported previously, HP's JVM currently runs on Wind River's VxWorks operating system, which was curiously absent from the list of HP licensees. The code has been ported to the 68K, MIPS, and x86 instruction sets. HP is "providing assistance" to its licensees in porting to ARM, PowerPC, and i960 architectures. Such ports are the licensees' responsibility, however, as HP will not push these projects ahead on its own.

HP's business model is to provide underlying technology to established vendors of real-time operating systems rather than selling its JVM directly to customers. HP reserves the right, however, to make deals with high-volume OEMs that do not use a commercial operating system. HP also has to find a name for its product. Like Intel and Motorola have done recently, the company is searching for a synthetic name it can trademark, something with more ring than "Hewlett-Packard embedded runtime environment."

Industry Resources: Stanford Lowers Its Admission Requirements

During the summer months, Stanford University hosts the Western Institute of Computer Science (WICS) at its campus near Palo Alto (Calif.). Courses run from two days to one week and include C++, automatic speech recognition, advances in Web technology, practical performance methods, and the curious "Ontologies for Knowledge Sharing and Reuse."

Tuition fees vary from $825 to $1,650 depending on length of course. For more information, contact WICS (Magalia, Calif.) at 530.873.0575 or http://wics.stanford.edu.