Embedded Processor Watch

Editor: Jim Turley
Sr. Editor: Tom Halfhill

In This Issue:

• Intel's Pentium/MMX Gets Hot(ter)
• Dallas Semi Adds A/D and PWM to 8051 Work-Alike
• Industry Resources: Media Processing a Highlight at the Forum
• New Embedded IC Announcements

Intel's Pentium/MMX Gets Hot(ter)

Intel is qualifying its aging Pentium/MMX processor for extended temperature ranges, a move that could make the one-time PC processor more attractive to embedded designers for industrial and automotive applications. In fact, Visteon, Ford's automotive-electronics subsidiary, has already signed up to use the processor in unspecified "future in-car computing applications."

Officially dubbed the Extended Temperature Pentium Processor with MMX Technology (ETPPMT), the 166-MHz chip is unchanged from its earlier days as a PC processor. The 0.25-micron silicon is housed in a plastic ball- grid-array package that measures 14 mm on a side. The chip is rated for temperatures from -40 degrees to +85 degrees (ambient) or +115 degrees (case temperature). Intel rates the mixed-voltage device's power consumption at 2.3 W (typical), 4.1 W (maximum).

The chip is scheduled to go on sale in 2Q99 at a 1,000-piece price of $49.50. While this is certainly an inexpensive price for a Pentium, it is still far more expensive than competing embedded processors with floating-point units. NEC's VR4300, for example, sells for about half that price, as do some of Hitachi's SH-3 and SH-4 processors. As usual, customers will pay a premium for Windows compatibility, though what this characteristic is worth in automotive applications remains unclear. Avoiding for now the obvious jokes about the danger of crashes, it seems a Windows-based car computer would be relegated to entertainment functions, not navigation or safety features.

Dallas Semi Adds A/D and PWM to 8051 Work-Alike

Dallas Semiconductor's new DS87C550 adds to the already bewildering assortment of 8051-compatible microcontrollers by bringing analog-to- digital conversion and pulse-width modulation (PWM) on board. The new device sells for $12.60 in 1,000-unit quantities.

Like Taco Bell, Dallas Semi has built a successful business by mixing three or four simple ingredients in seemingly endless combinations. Usually its products include some combination of an 8051, nonvolatile memory, a real-time clock, and a battery. With the A/D and PWM features, Dallas's new chip lends itself to instrumentation, imaging, and consumer-electronics applications. The chip is also relatively fast, running at 33 MHz, with shorter per-instruction clock counts than most 8051 devices. The device also has 8K of EPROM and the usual assortment of microcontroller features. Housed in a 68-lead PLCC, the DS87C550 is available immediately.

Industry Resources: Media Processing a Highlight at the Forum

Among the nearly two-dozen new chip announcements at Embedded Processor Forum will be Sun's unveiling of UltraSPARC-IIe and Hitachi's SH7751, two chips aimed squarely at high-end media-processing applications in embedded systems. These two, plus one other vendor to be announced, will disclose how their chips have been designed for audio and video through a combination of instruction sets, cache and memory architecture, and other system-level enhancements. After their presentations, all the vendors will participate in a live roundtable discussion where Forum attendees can ask pointed questions and draw their own conclusions.

The Embedded Processor Forum will be held May 3 - 6 in San Jose (Calif.). For more information, visit http://www.MDRonline.com/epf.

New Embedded IC Announcements

AD627 (Analog Devices) Instrumentation amplifier has rail-to-rail outputs of +/- 18 V, with a single 2.2-V supply; draws 85 uA, with 10 ppm drift. Price: $2/30/1,000; Production: Now; Call ADI at 781.937.1428.

VIPer31 (STMicroelectronics) Power manager for batteries that require rectangular constant-current, constant-voltage output characteristics; in SO-10 package. Price: $1.30/10,000; Production: Now; Call ST at 781.861.2650.

AD9884 (Analog Devices) Analog-to-digital converter for digitizing RGB graphics has 140-Msps encode rate, 500-MHz analog bandwidth, and supports 1280 x 1024 resolution. Price: $25/10,000; Production: Now; Call ST at 781.937.1428.

AD8114, AD8115 (Analog Devices) High-speed 16 x 16 video crosspoint switches with 256 switch points, 16 output amplifiers and control logic. Price: $59.99/1,000; Production: Now; Call ADI at 781.937.1428.

TLV1570 (Texas Instruments) Serial 10-bit A/D converter has throughput rate of 1.25 Msps at 5 V and 625 ksps at 3 V; with eight-channel multiplexer. Price: $3.70/1,000; Production: Now; Call TI at 800.477.8924.

CS4294 (Crystal Semi) Multichannel AC 97 PC audio codec for multichannel sound cards combines two A/D coverters, stereo mixing for three inputs. Price: $3.50/10,000; Production: Now; Call Crystal at 512.912.3587.

CS5180, CS5181 (Crystal Semi) Delta-sigma 16-bit A/D converters have 93- dB signal/noise ratio, and variable input rates of 8 kHz to 400 kHz. Price: $12.50/1,000; Production: Now; Call Crystal at 512.912.3587.