Embedded Processor Watch

Editor: Tom Halfhill

In This Issue:

• IBM's PowerPC 405GP Introduces CoreConnect Bus
• Mips and Chartered Form Unique Partnership
• Industry Resources: Microprocessor Forum Early Registration
• New Embedded IC Announcements

IBM's PowerPC 405GP Introduces CoreConnect Bus IBM's latest PowerPC processor, the 405GP, is a highly integrated system on a chip (SOC) with PCI, Ethernet, an SDRAM controller, and the first implementation of CodePack code compression. What's potentially more important is that IBM is using the 405GP to kick off the CoreConnect bus -- an on-chip bus architecture for SOCs that IBM is offering free to all comers.

CoreConnect isn't exactly new. Over the past two years, IBM has designed more than 20 ASICs by using the bus to link CPU cores and macros from its Blue Logic library. What's new is that IBM has formalized the bus architecture for external use, has made it more CPU independent, and is freely licensing it to other chip companies, intellectual-property designers, and tool vendors.

IBM says the license has no strings attached: no up-front fees, no manufacturing fees, and no royalties. The first CoreConnect licensees are Cadence, Lexra, Mentor Graphics, Stellar Semiconductor, Summit Design, and Technical Data Freeway. IBM has formed a CoreConnect user group to help steer future development of the bus.

It's not hard to see how IBM stands to gain from openly licensing CoreConnect. IBM has a library of cores and macros that already work with CoreConnect, and IBM's chip designers have years of experience with the bus. Other suppliers of cores and macros that adopt CoreConnect would have to catch up.

But it's hard to ignore the overlap between CoreConnect and the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance (VSIA), not to mention ARM's Advanced Microprocessor Bus Architecture (AMBA), IDT's IPBus, Motorola's IP Bus (no relation to IDT's), and other on-chip interfaces vying for wider acceptance.

As with most competitions of this sort, technical specifications are only one consideration. The winner -- if, indeed, there is a winner -- will likely prevail on the strengths of marketing muscle, mindshare, and moxie. What seems more likely is that all of the competing standards will fracture the market, delaying or derailing attempts to establish a neutral standard on which everyone in the industry can agree.--T.R.H. (The full version of this article appeared in the July 17 issue of Microprocessor Report.)

Mips and Chartered Form Unique Partnership

Mips Technologies and Chartered Semiconductor have formed a new partnership that allows customers to use Mips's latest CPU cores without negotiating a regular MIPS license or porting the soft cores to an IC process. Mips and Chartered say the unique arrangement will expand the market for embedded MIPS processors while saving customers the time and cost of porting cores to silicon.

Under the terms of the agreement, Chartered is a licensed foundry partner for the new MIPS32 4Kc and 4Kp Jade cores (see Embedded Processor Watch #51, http://www.MDRonline.com/q/epw/issues/epw_51.html). Chartered will port the cores to its 0.25-micron process by 4Q99 and later to a 0.18-micron process in 1H00 and a copper 0.18-micron process (developed with Lucent) in 2H00. Customers who want to integrate the cores with standard-cell macros can deal directly with Chartered by signing a simplified MIPS license. In return, they'll get the timing models, abstract files, and test vectors needed to design around the MIPS core. Chartered will drop the core into the customer's design and manufacture the wafers. Customers pay predefined royalties to Mips based on volume.

Besides saving upfront licensing fees, porting costs, and development time -- not to mention the risk of botching a silicon port -- customers are also insulated from Mips's intellectual property. They can develop their own designs without fear of "contamination." As a spokesman for Chartered put it, "They're not any more contaminated than an Intel customer who buys a Pentium."--T.R.H. (The full version of this article appeared in the July 17 issue of Microprocessor Report.)

Industry Resources: Microprocessor Forum Early Registration

This week is your last chance -- sign up by July 26 to take advantage of early registration prices for the 12th annual Microprocessor Forum. The forum will be held October 4-8, 1999, at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose. The two-day conference will include the first disclosures of more than 15 microprocessors, including new embedded chips and cores from IBM, Hitachi, Mips Technologies, and National Semiconductor. Other companies will describe new DSPs, 3D-graphics accelerators, and media processors.

For those interested in PC processors, Intel will reveal the microarchitecture of Merced, its first IA-64 processor, and RISC vendors will disclose the new processors and techniques they will use to distinguish their offerings. In addition, the seminar program includes six seminars on PC processors, IA-64, 3D graphics, embedded processors, and DSPs.

Early registration prices of $1,395 for the conference and $698 per seminar are available until July 26. For more information and to register, go to http://www.MDRonline.com/x/mpf1 or call 800.700.4004 or 707.824.4004.

New Embedded IC Announcements

Trio (Aplio): a tri-processor chip for adding audio and telephony functions to Internet appliances, digital music players, and other trendy consumer products. The Trio has a 32-bit RISC CPU (an ARM core), two 16-bit fixed-point DSPs (Oak cores), several on-chip peripherals, and interfaces for keyboards and DRAM. Each DSP core has 98K of memory. It's compatible with Aplio's software modules for modems, voice compression, and echo cancellation. Price: $20/100,000; production: 4Q99. Call Aplio at 888.642.7546 or go to http://www.aplio.com.

AD9814 (Analog Devices): a three-channel, 14-bit analog signal processor for CCD imaging systems in scanners and copiers. It includes everything necessary for performing three-channel signal processing, including input clamps, correlated double samplers, offset digital-to-analog converters, and programmable gain amplifiers for each color RGB channel. Price: $8.00 or $20.00/1,000; production: now. Call ADI at 800.262.5643 or go to http://www.analog.com.

SPT5510 (Signal Processing Technologies): a 16-bit digital-to-analog converter that operates at 200 MHz. Its settling time is 35 ns to 16-bit accuracy (0.00076%) or 15 ns to 14-bit accuracy (0.0031%) with low-glitch impulse energy of 30 pV-s. Price: $39.50/1,000; production: now. Call SPT at 800.643.3778 or go to http://www.spt.com.