QuickLogic in licensing deal with MIPS

"We'd been looking for some time for more system-level silicon," he said. "We began shopping around and chose MIPS for a number of reasons," including the architecture's low power consumption and the availability of software tools and support, he said. "It's a great fit to our business model."

Because QuickLogic has not yet announced the product family, Tralka declined to disclose details of the core's implementation, such as the manufacturing process or the timing of product releases. However, like MIPS, QuickLogic has contracted with foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. MIPS, Mountain View, Calif., has also agreed to license selected cores from TSMC to enable both companies' customers to ship products to market faster.

QuickLogic's products are manufactured on a four-layer metal, 0.35-micron transistor technology, and the company says it is moving to a five-layer, 0.25-micron process.

The combination of the MIPS/TSMC agreements, the QuickLogic license, and MIPS' existing arrangements with foundry partners offers designers a compelling design path, according to Tom Halfhill, embedded-microprocessor analyst at MicroDesign Resources Inc., Sunnyvale. A designer not only can quickly verify a MIPS-based design using the QuickLogic model, but software testing and verification can begin while the ASIC is being fabricated, he said.