SAN JOSE, Calif. and CAMBRIDGE, UK - August 29, 2000 - inSilicon Corporation (Nasdaq: INSN), a leading provider of communications technology for complex systems-on-a-chip (SoC), and ARM [(LSE: ARM); (Nasdaq: ARMHY)], the industry's leading provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC processor solutions, today announced that inSilicon has licensed the ARM MicroPack[tm] and PrimeCell[tm] Peripherals. Through this agreement, inSilicon will sub-license the ARM peripherals and offer them in combination with inSilicon's communications technology intellectual property (IP) to silicon manufacturers and system developers worldwide, accelerating time-to-market for overall system development and advancing design re-use.
The PrimeCell Peripherals are AMBA[tm] bus-compliant, IP cores developed by ARM for SoC integration. These peripherals are ready to use, of proven design and developed for reuse. The ARM MicroPack design kit enables SoC designers to rapidly integrate the PrimeCell Peripherals with additional third party IP into AMBA bus-based platforms.
"ARM has worked extensively as an inSilicon Authorized Design Center over the past year, providing SoC solutions to our silicon and systems partners for a wide range of ARM Powered[tm] communications applications," said Reynette Au, vice president of Worldwide Marketing, ARM. "This agreement extends our relationship as well as the availability of the industry-proven AMBA bus-based IP, expanding the breadth of inSilicon's ARM IP-based communications solutions while providing developers with a new level of efficient and cost-effective design re-use."
The AMBA bus specification is an established, open bus standard that serves as a framework for SoC designs. It is the backbone of ARM's design reuse strategy, and is targeted for performance. Since the AMBA specification is processor and technology-independent, it enhances the reusability of peripheral and system macrocells across a wide range of IC products.
ARM offers full SoC solutions including processor cores, peripheral intellectual property, development tools, application software, EDA tools and design services. The ARM architecture is well supported by semiconductor and system manufacturers, real-time operating system providers, third-party tool chain developers, application software providers and ARM design centers.