Taiwan's ITRI picks MIPS' RISC processor core for cable-modem designs

Taiwan's ITRI picks MIPS' RISC processor core for cable-modem designs
By Semiconductor Business News
February 8, 2002 (12:52 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020208S0059

HSINCHU, Taiwan -- The Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a major Taiwanese R&D organization, announced it has chosen MIPS Technologies Inc.'s RISC processor core for use in a single-chip, cable-modem reference design.

Under the plan, ITRI's SOC Technology Center (STC) will use MIPS' S324Kc hard chip core to develop a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design. ITRI's Computer and Communications Research Labs (CCL) will then take the SoC to develop a system-level reference design.

Then, CCL and STC will transfer the design to various PC and chip makers in Taiwan, which will commercialize the technology for broadband Internet and wireless applications.

"MIPS is the mainstream technology in the single-chip cable modem market, and the 4Kc core, based on the highly-scalable, industry-standard MIPS architecture, will allow ITRI to take the lead in developing advanced technology for our next-generation broadband modem SoC design," said Bao-Shuh Paul Lin, general director of CCL and vice president of ITRI, based in Hsinchu.

Based on 0.18-micron technology, MIPS' 324Kc hard core is made on a foundry basis by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd.