Cadence spins off MPU design group

Cadence spins off MPU design group
By Michael Santarini, EE Times
April 9, 1999 (10:14 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19990409S0002

AUSTIN, Texas — Cadence Design Systems Inc. will spin off its Alchemy design group into a new system-on-a-chip (SOC) company focused on microprocessor design.

The new company, which has just obtained a license to MIPS Technologies' 32-bit architecture, will provide standard MIPS-based SOC products to OEMs in the digital consumer marketplace, specifically those targeting G3 wireless digital phones.

The new company will be headed by Rich Witek, former architect of the StrongARM and Alpha microprocessors, and Greg Hoeppner, former director of StrongARM development. While at Digital Equipment Corp., Hoeppner and Witek's development team was responsible for the StrongARM family of processors, including the 110 CPU and StrongARM 1100 system-on-a-chip.

Early last year, Cadence lured 19 of Digital Equipment's StrongARM engineers away from the company just before the StrongARM group was purchased by Intel Corp.

According to Shane Robison, executive vice president of worldwide research and development at Cadence (San Jose, Calif.), the Alchemy group functioned as part of Cadence's R&D group to develop next-generation tool flows, while Cadence was trying to figure out other ways to use their expertise.

"We concluded, they would be more effective as an independent entity," said Robison. "The microprocessor design business is not Cadence's core business. That is not a market segment we have chosen to go after and we did not want them to lose any momentum."

Moving forward, Alchemy plans to develop high-performance MIPS-based processor cores at power levels below 0.5 watt and expects the first products to be available next year for select consumer markets, said Phil Pompa, vice president of marketing.

"We have the ability to license our IP, do complete SOC designs for system OEMs and the ability to design and manufacture product ourselves," said Pompa.

Hoeppner said Alchemy will develop its own microarchitecture implementations of MIPS 32 ISA.

"We believe there is an advantage in leveraging MIPS architecture and plan on moving the MIPS architecture into lower power space than is currently available from existing MIPS licensees," he said. "We believe we can take the MIPS architecture into new product spaces."

Specifically, with the MIPS architecture license, Alchemy plans to deliver SOCs targeted at G3 wireless digital phones, Window CE clam-shell and palm-size computers, real-time embedded systems and auto-PC systems.

Pompa said Alchemy will work with MIPS Technologies in addition to other third parties to provide hardware and software solutions. The companies will also work with customers to define application-specific and customer-specific uses of those platforms.

Robison said Cadence will continue to fund Alchemy operations and expects to maintain an equity position in the new company. He said Cadence and the Alchemy group are currently in advanced discussions with venture-capital firms about the investment opportu nity, and it plans to spin the group off in the next three to six months.

The group plans to maintain its headquarters in Austin, Texas.