Faraday's IP and SoC Service Helps StorLink's 130nm Dual-CPU Network Processor to Penetrate Networking and Home Market

 
Hsinchu, Taiwan and Sunnyvale, California -- September 11, 2006 --  Faraday Technology (TAIEX: 3035), a leading IP and ASIC provider, today announced it is supplying dual-core network processor SoC design to StorLink Semiconductor for its Gemini™ & family targeting IP set-top-box, VoIP gateway, media server with RAID, NAS and gigabit router gateway markets. Faraday's market-proven ARM-architecture FA526 CPU cores and SoC design expertise accelerated the successful development of this high-speed, low-power and cost-effective NPU SoC for StorLink.

Much of the motivation for building a multi-core processor comes from the increasing difficulty of improving processor performance by increasing the operating frequency. Multi-core design can make use of proven CPU core library designs and produce a high-performance SoC with lower risk of design error. Other advantages of multi-core SoCs over using discrete CPUs include: reduced latency, higher clock rate for cache coherency circuitry, lower power consumption, and smaller die size.

StorLink's Gemini product line deploys dual 32-bit Faraday ARM-Compatible FA CPU cores to provide 800 MIPS (400 MIPS per CPU) of processing performance, with 60% less power dissipation when compared with industry leaders' solutions. In addition to its mere 1.5W total power consumption, the IC also features programmable power management for power sensitive applications. This chip also packed with integrated functions such as dual Gigabit Ethernet MAC, dual USB2.0 host & device selectable interfaces, a 66MHz 32-bit PCI interface, dual IDE (parallel-ATA and serial-ATA) hard-drive controllers, a DDR memory controller, feature rich hardware security engine, and a proprietary NetEngine™ TCP/IP protocol accelerator. Faraday's broad IP portfolio and solid SoC integration flow helped StorLink complete the SoC design in time.

“Faraday has played a key role in the success of StorLink's Gemini SoC,” said Dr. Stewart Wu, President and CEO of StorLink Semiconductors. “By levering Faraday's market-proven IPs and SoC design expertise, we can focus on our core competence and application software development.”

“Faraday's and StorLink's engineering teams worked together closely to ensure the complex dual-core SoC design meet both the high performance and low power dissipation requirements of the networking and home market,” said Dr. George Hwang , Vice President of R&D and Marketing at Faraday. “I'm extremely delighted that Faraday's long, established relationship with StorLink has resulted yet another successful SoC project.”
 
About StorLink Semiconductor

StorLink Semiconductors, Inc. is a privately held fabless semiconductor design company that develops high performance and cost effective IC solutions for the gigabit networking and consumer electronics applications. Founded in 2002 by Dr. Stewart Wu, a former executive at Broadcom Corporation, the company continues to develop innovative hardware and software products that enable the convergence of data, voice, video, gaming in networking and storage.

About Faraday Technology Corporation

Faraday Technology Corporation is a leading silicon IP and fabless ASIC vendor. The company's broad SIP portfolio includes 32-bit RISC CPUs, DSPs, MPEG4, H.264, PHYs/Controllers for USB 2.0, 10/100 Ethernet, Serial ATA, PCI Express, Cell Library and Memory Compiler. With more than 650 employees and 2005 revenue of US$175 million, Faraday is one of the largest fabless ASIC companies in the Asia-Pacific region, and it also has a significant presence in other world-wide markets. Headquartered in Taiwan , Faraday has service and support offices around the world, including the U.S. , Japan , Europe, and China . For more information, please visit : www.faraday-tech.com