Coverstory by Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor
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coverstory By Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor u WELCOME to the 31st annual EDN Microprocessor/Microcontroller Di- rectory. The number of companies and devices the directory lists continues to grow and change. The size of this year’s table of devices has grown more than NEW PROCESSOR OFFERINGS 25% from last year’s. Also, despite the fact that a number of companies have disappeared from the list, the number of companies participating in this year’s CONTINUE TO INCLUDE directory has still grown by 10%. So what? Should this growth and change in the companies and devices the directory lists mean anything to you? TARGETED, INTEGRATED One thing to note is that this year’s directory has experienced more compa- ny and product-line changes than the previous few years. One significant type PERIPHERAL SETS THAT SPAN of change is that more companies are publicly offering software-programma- ble processors. To clarify this fact, not every company that sells processor prod- ALL ARCHITECTURE SIZES. ucts decides to participate in the directory. One reason for not participating is that the companies are selling their processors only to specific customers and are not yet publicly offering those products. Some of the new companies par- ticipating in this year’s directory have recently begun making their processors available to the engineering public. Another type of change occurs when a company acquires another company or another company’s product line. Some of the acquired product lines are no longer available in their current form, such as the MediaQ processors that Nvidia acquired or the Triscend products that Arm acquired. Those architec- tures and technologies may publicly resurface in the next year as different prod- www.edn.com August 5, 2004 | edn 39 m i crop rocessor ucts. The recent creation of As for the directory contents itself, this print version con- Freescale, a spinoff of Motoro- tains an alphabetical company-and-product summary to give la, is similar to last year’s spinoff you a high-level overview of this year’s participating compa- of Renesas from Hitachi and nies, their products, and any product or development-tool Mitsubishi; these types of spin- highlights from the last year.You can access the tables exclu- offs allow the new companies to sively at the Web version of this directory at EDN’s Web site, better focus on being more suc- www.edn.com, as a set of PDF files. The site provides multi- cessfully competitive with their ple versions of the tables, sorting the data across multiple products. columns. The growth in the size and company-participation rate in We welcome your feedback about the directory, because it the directory suggests that these changes are not an industry can help us to make the directory more useful to you. Please consolidation but rather are consistent with a budding or ex- let us know what types of information, such as development pected resurgence in embedded-design starts. This directo- tools and third-party-support cross-indexing for each device, ry includes only software-programmable microcontrollers you’d like the directory to include. Send your comments to and microprocessors, including processor cores and pro- [email protected]. If this directory helps you choose a grammable-logic devices with embedded-processor cores. processor, please let the vendor know how you found its part. The directory does not include DSPs; EDN lists DSPs in the If you cannot find your favorite processor company or de- annual DSP directory, which it publishes six months out of vices, please notify both that company and EDN that you phase with this one. missed reading about them in the directory. ACTEL CORP (WWW.ACTEL.COM) family offers an EVP (enhanced- performance embedded Geode SOPC (system-on-programmable- Actel’s 8-bit Core8051 micro- virus-protection) capability for a processors that the company built chip)-builder tool that Altera’s controller core targets consumer, more secure computing environ- on the AMD Athlon core. The Quartus II design software fea- automotive, industrial, and military ment, and it features the Direct ÉlanSC5220 x86 controller covers tures. Altera continues to support and aerospace applications operat- Connect Architecture that directly the datacomm, telecom, and infor- its first-generation Nios embedded ing on Actel’s nonvolatile, single- connects the memory controller mation-appliance markets. processor. chip ProASIC Plus, Axcelerator, SX- and I/O to the CPU to improve the AMD’s MIPS-based Alchemy Altera’s Excalibur embedded- A, and RTSX-S FPGAs. The core overall system performance and microprocessors target PDAs, Web processor offerings integrate an executes all ASM51 instructions in efficiency. tablets, and portable and wired ARM922T processor subsystem one cycle and features 13 four-pri- The AMD64 family of proces- Internet-access devices and gate- with Altera’s programmable-logic ority-level interrupts, 32 I/O ports, sors extends the x86 ISA across way applications. This year saw the architecture. The Excalibur devices two timers, and a programmable 32- and 64-bit platforms. The AMD introduction of the AMD Alchemy allow you to operate the processor serial port. You can combine the Opteron processor targets servers Au1550 security-network proces- in stand-alone mode before con- Core8051 with other Actel IP cores and workstations, and the AMD sor. The Au1550 processor’s low figuring the FPGA. Altera’s SOPC to enhance its functions. Athlon 64 processor and Mobile power consumption makes it suit- Builder system-integration tool Actel’s Platform8051 develop- AMD Athlon 64 processor target able for battery-powered and connects the processor, peripher- ment kit includes the IP cores, soft- desktop and mobile PCs. The AMD power-over-Ethernet applications. als, and user-defined peripherals ware tools, and target silicon that Athlon XP and AMD Athlon XP-M using an intelligent switch fabric enable designers to configure IP processors feature the Quanti- ALTERA (WWW.ALTERA.COM) and generates a custom software- cores, including Actel’s Core8051. Speed architecture and support for The three Nios II general-pur- development kit. Actel tested and verified its preim- AMD’s 3DNow! Professional pose RISC-processor soft cores tar- plemented, synthesizable Direct- instructions for enhanced multime- get use in Altera’s Stratix, Stratix II, ANALOG DEVICES Core IP building blocks in Actel dia. The Athlon XP-M processors Cyclone, and HardCopy device (WWW.ANALOG.COM) FPGAs. are available in smaller PGA pack- families. The standard Nios II/s Analog Devices’ ADuC702x fam- ages to support “thin-and-light” core offers a balance between core ily of precision analog microcon- ADVANCED MICRO DEVICES designs. size and performance, and the trollers integrates a 32-bit ARM7- (WWW.AMD.COM) The AMD Geode processor fam- Nios II/e and Nios II/f push the TDMI core with 12-bit ADCs. AMD offers an x86-based prod- ily targets broadband multimedia, balance toward a smaller core or Targeting industrial, optical-net- uct line addressing the needs of set-top boxes, and thin-client appli- faster performance, respectively. working, and automotive applica- embedded, mobile, and enter- cations. Developers can compare The Nios II/e core can consume as tions in which control and moni- prise-class servers and worksta- Geode processors by using a per- little as 35 cents’ worth of logic, toring are critical, the devices sup- tions and desktop PCs. This year, formance-power-rating nomencla- and the Nios II/f can achieve 200 port as many as 16 channels of AMD introduced models of the ture to select the processor with Dhrystone MIPS performance. All fast, 12-bit-accurate analog-to-digi- AMD Opteron, AMD Athlon 64, the appropriate mix of perform- three cores share a common 32- tal conversion and as many as four and Mobile AMD Athlon 64 ance and power consumption. This bit ISA and are 100% binary-code- 12-bit DACs. The ARM7TDMI fea- processors. The AMD64 processor year, AMD released a line of high- compatible. Designers use the tures a flash-based 16/32-bit RISC- 40 edn | August 5, 2004 www.edn.com d irectory processor core integrating analog core registers to further tailor the ATMEL (WWW.ATMEL.COM) V2.0B CAN controller that the peripherals, such as a precision system performance. Atmel provides standard prod- Atmel CANary microcontroller bandgap reference with a drift The seven-stage 32-bit scalar ucts, ASICs, and application-spe- family uses. The CAN controller performance of better than 10 RISC ARC 700-processor architec- cific options for the embedded- can handle 15 independent mes- ppm/ЊC. Other peripherals include ture targets high-data-rate applica- product market using seven sage objects, which you can pro- a comparator, a programmable- tions. The processor is available as microcontroller or microprocessor gram on the fly. With a 16-MIPS logic array for glue logic, and a synthesizable HDL that enables architectures. These architectures AVR RISC engine, 128-kbyte flash three-phase PWM generator. porting to almost any foundry or include the 4-bit Marc 4 that tar- program memory, 4-kbyte RAM, synthesis library. The ARC 700 uses gets low-power automotive appli- and 4-kbyte on-chip EEPROM, APPLIED MICRO CIRCUITS CORP the ARCompact ISA and is back- cations; the 8-bit AVR and 8051; AT90CAN128 is appropriate for (WWW.AMCC.COM) ward-compatible with the ARC- the 16-bit ARM Thumb; the 32-bit industrial-control applications. Over the last year, AMCC tangent -A5 and ARC 600 proces- ARM and MIPS; and the 32-bit acquired the 32-bit PowerPC 400 sors. Although the ARC 700 offers Sparc that is appropriate for radia- CIRRUS LOGIC family of processors. The Power- high clock rates, it makes few tion-tolerant aerospace designs.