Massana, Xemics team on low-power MCU-DSP core

Massana, Xemics team on low-power MCU-DSP core
By Michael Santarini, EE Times
April 17, 2000 (9:46 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000417S0011

Belfast, Ireland-based core provider Massana Inc. has teamed up with fabless semiconductor vendor Xemics (Neuchatel, Switzerland) to offer a low-power, low-voltage solution combining Xemics' CoolRISC 8-bit RISC microprocessor and Massana's FILU-5016-bit fixed-point DSP coprocessor.

The new product, FILU-50/CoolRISC, targets small-footprint applications such as medical, sensors, motor control, handheld communicators and Internet-enabled portable appliances, said Ben O'Sullivan, business development manager at Massana.

O'Sullivan said that the core was not created at the request of one particular customer, but that after polling several customers the companies realized users would be very receptive to a low-power MCU-DSP combo core.

The core boasts performance of 4 Mips for the MPU and 2 Mips for the DSP, giving a combined total of 6 million instructions/second with a 1-volt supply. Massana's FILU-5016-bit is connected to Xemics' CoolRISC 8-bit RISC via an application programming interface. That means FILU-50/CoolRISC users will be able to develop their applications entirely in C using an API to invoke DSP functions, the company said.

CoolRISC call

Massana's DSP coprocessor core portion of the FILU-50/CoolRISC contains a set of preprogrammed DSP functions that are accessed through a C-language function call from the CoolRISC. Customers program the core with Xemics' CoolRide software package. The core package includes C and Verilog models, which engineers can use for system simulation. The two companies also offer an evaluation board to allow users to develop their own systems applications.

To find out more about FILU-50/CoolRISC, contact www.massana.com or www.xemics.com.