Embedded Processor Watch

Editor: Jim Turley

In This Issue:

• Motorola MCore M300 Gains Floating-Point Ability
• ARM-10 To Wrestle With StrongARM in 2000
• Weird Product of the Week: Microsoft Remote
• Industry Resources: DECompressing into Compaq
• Industry Resources: Bop On Over to Benchmark Newsletter
• New Embedded IC Announcements

Motorola MCore M300 Gains Floating-Point Ability

The next generation of Motorola's midrange 32-bit MCore family will get floating-point math capability for the first time, as well as improved performance through simple branch prediction and branch folding. The enhancements should put MCore on a path to reach 100 MHz within a few months. It also poises MCore to overtake ColdFire in Motorola's 32-bit processor arsenal.

First revealed at October's Embedded Processor Forum, the M300 family will handle single-precision IEEE-754 floating-point, a first for MCore and still an unusual feature in low-cost embedded chips. M300 chips will have only add, subtract, multiply, and divide instructions, not specialized geometric or transcendental floating-point operations. These should be sufficient to get the M300 into ink-jet and laser printers and some motion-control applications.

Motorola also improve MCore's performance with some simple branch prediction. All short backward branches (such as appear at the bottom of a loop) are assumed to be taken. The M300 automatically redirects execution back to the top of the loop before evaluating the loop condition at the bottom. The prediction shaves two clock cycles off every loop iteration, and is correct 65% of the time, according to Motorola.

At first a dark horse, MCore now seems to be on a faster track for improvement than Motorola's other midrange 32-bit processor, ColdFire. MCore has gone from 0 to 100 MHz in very little time, and is gaining an FPU before ColdFire. ColdFire may be the better choice for developers with some attachment to legacy 68000 software and tools, but MCore appears to be on the faster track for more performance and capability.

ARM-10 To Wrestle With StrongARM in 2000

At last month's Embedded Processor Forum, ARM President and CEO Robin Saxby gave the keynote address while architect Dave Jaggar pulled the wraps off their latest work: ARM10. Due out in late 1999, ARM10 will vastly increase the performance of today's ARM designs, adding media-processing features for the first time and boosting speeds to 300 MHz and 420 Dhrystone MIPS. In the eyes of many, ARM10 will run neck and neck with Intel's StrongARM, wrestling Intel for high-profile designs in TV set-top boxes and handheld computers.

ARM10 will be completely software compatible with previous ARM cores, but with a new VFP (vector floating-point) unit that increases ARM's reach in media and mathematics processing. Like Pentium's MMX, the VPF adds a number of FP operations on parallel data. The VFP can perform a single-precision MAC (multiply- accumulate) every clock cycle at 300 MHz, for 600 MFLOPS. That and other features will make ARM10-based chips suitable for set-top boxes and other media-rich applications.

To help feed the beast, the ARM10 core includes a pair of large caches, currently defined as 32K apiece. The MMU is compatible with Windows CE. ARM expects first 0.25-micron samples of the ARM10 in 3Q99, so production parts will probably appear in 2000.

The first ARM10 parts should be faster than current StrongARM chips when they appear, but StrongARM should itself have improved by that time. Intel is beavering away on StrongARM-2 at its facility in Arizona, and that project is expected to conclude about the same time that ARM10 hits the street. Intel has never before designed a StrongARM processor, however, and there is some concern that the team may have trouble duplicating the impressive results of the original StrongARM team, which has since disbanded. Whatever the outcome, it looks as if ARM10 will be the top of the line for all the ARM licensees other than Intel.

Weird Product of the Week: Microsoft Remote

Microsoft has teamed up with pretentious audio purveyor Harman Kardon to produce a new home A/V remote control. The device weighs close to a pound (13.7 ounces) and includes a touch-sensitive backlit LCD screen, running on four AA batteries.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the remote control is running neither MS-DOS nor Windows CE, but a "home-grown" operating system of indeterminate origin. It is programmable, and is said to be able to control 32 activities on 15 separate devices, a feat difficult to visualize.

The device will be sold under both the Harman Kardon and Madrigal Audio Labs (an imprint of Harman Kardon) brand names. The Harman Kardon Take Control will retail for $350; the Madrigal version is inexplicably $50 more expensive. Units should be on sale now.

Industry Resources: DECompressing into Compaq

As Digital Equipment gets absorbed by Compaq, so "Shannon Knows DEC" metamorphoses into a Compaq-centered periodical. This industry newsletter covering Digital/Compaq enterprise computing is published twice a month by Terry C. Shannon.

Subscriptions to the four-page newsletter run $395 per year. For more information, contact Mr. Shannon (Ashland, Mass.) at 508.881.5563 or visit http://www.acersoft.com.

Industry Resources: Bop On Over to Benchmark Newsletter

"Benchmark Insider" is a monthly print newsletter from ZDBop, the Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operation. Coverage includes results and observations from WinBench, 3D WinBench, WinMark, and other PC, Web, 3D, and desktop benchmarks. Subscribers also have access to the Benchmark Insider Web site (which is temporarily free) at http://www.benchmarkinsider.com.

Annual subscriptions (12 issues) run $295 for the printed newsletter and Web access. For more information, point your browser to http://www.benchmarkinsider.com.

New Embedded IC Announcements

S2045 (AMCC) SONET/SDH section terminator transceiver used for integrating four STS-12/STM-4 data streams into a single STS-48/STM-16 data stream. Price: $192/100 Production: Now; Call AMCC at 619.450.9333.

TLV1570 (TI) Serial 10-bit analog/digital converter takes 1.25 million samples/s at 5 V, or 625 ksamples/s at 3 V; with eight-channel input multiplexer. Price: $3.70/1,000; Production: Now; Call TI at 800.477.8924

S2060 (AMCC) CMOS transmitter and receiver for Gigabit Ethernet operates at 1.25 Gbit/s and is pin-compatible with bipolar S2052, dissipating 600 mW. Price: $11/100; Production: Now; Call AMCC at 619.450.9333.

S2070, S2075 (AMCC) Fibre Channel transceiver ('70) and bit-stream monitor with repeater ('75) support transmission rate to 1,062 Mbit/s. Price: $11.50/100; Production: Now; Call AMCC at 619.450.9333.

AT49F512 (Atmel) Flash memory has 512-kbit capacity, organized as 64Kx8, with 8K boot block and 56K main block; 70-ns access time. Price: $2.20/1,000; Production: Now; Call Atmel at 408.441.0311.

AT49F516 (Atmel) Flash memory has 512-kbit capacity, organized as 32Kx16, with 8K boot block and 56K main block; 70-ns access time. Price: $2.50/1,000; Production: Now; Call Atmel at 408.441.0311.

AT49BV8192A, AT49BV008A (Atmel) Flash memory chips has 8-Mbit capacity, organized as 512Kx16 ('192) or 1Mx8 ('008), with top or bottom boot; 100-ns read time at 2.7 V. Price: $9/1,000; Production: Now; Call Atmel at 408.441.0311.

M27W512 (STMicroelectronics) One-time programmable (OTP) ROM has 80-ns access time, 2.7-V supply voltage, 15-ľA standby current, PLCC or TSOP packages. Price: $1.30/10,000; Production: Now.