STMicro debuts RISC-based configurable SoC

Mark LaPedus
(02/07/2005 4:19 PM EST)

  SAN FRANCISCO — At the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), STMicroelectronics Inc. outlined a novel approach for configurable processors.

STMicroelectronics (Geneva) rolled out the XiSystem architecture, which is RISC-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) design with reconfigurable I/O modules.

"XiSystem is a XiRISC-based SoC that moves towards system-level configurability, providing user-defined applications-specific computing blocks and I/O interfaces, with no need to change silicon," according to STMicroelectronics.

Based on a 130-nm CMOS process, the XiRISC SoC features a double-datapath VLIW RISC processor. It is enhanced with a DSP-like function units and with a pipeline configurable data-path, called PiCoGa.