Automotive specialist deals ARM-based core to Oki

Automotive specialist deals ARM-based core to Oki
By Peter Clarke, Semiconductor Business News
August 8, 2002 (1:24 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020808S0017

PHOENIX, Arizona -- Automotive Integrated Electronics Corp., a supplier of ASIC design services and SoC chips to the automotive industry, has become a supplier of an automotive-specific microprocessor based on an ARM9-derived RISC microprocessor from ARM Holdings plc.

SBN.

"It [the AIEC9] is more of a microprocessor than a microcontroller. It includes CPU, FPU and memory and it also includes all the necessary calibration hooks for automotive developers," Gauer said.

Licensees of the AIEC9 embedded flash microprocessor core can combine the core with peripherals provided by AIEC, semiconductor suppliers, third-party suppliers, or automotive OEMs to create a customized microcontrollers or system chips to meet their customers' needs.

"AIEC is excited that Oki has selected the AIEC9 for developing its next generation high-end automotive microcontrollers," said Gauer.

Oki's initial implementation of the AIEC9 microprocessor core is set to use Oki's 0.22-micron embedded flash technology and be capable of operating at 80-MHz across the automotive temperature range of --40 degrees C to 125 degrees C.

Oki's AIEC9 platform chip contains 48-kbytes of SRAM for data store and 1-Mbyte of instruction store flash with a 64-bit microprocessor interface controlled by the AIEC Memory Expander. The wide interface is used to help the AIEC9 achieve zero wait state access for sequential code despite a mismatch between CPU and flash memory maximum frequency and without use of cache memory.