Faraday Offers Peripheral Composer, the Fastest Time-to-Market Structured ASIC for Peripheral Interface Chips

SUNNYVALE, Calif. and HSINCHU, Taiwan, March 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Faraday Technology Corporation (TAIEX: 3035), a leading provider of ASIC design services and silicon IP, today announced the PeripheralComposer-1 (PC-1), a new member of its Composer(TM) application specific structured ASIC product line. Based on the ARM processor architecture and integrating USB and Ethernet, Faraday's PC-1 is positioned to serve a variety of embedded systems which have wired or wireless interconnects requirements.

The PC-1 prediffuses IP blocks essential to data networkings and system interconnections in the base array, while remains flexible for customization and differentiation. Since the base array is pre-verified and pre-manufactured, it also significantly reduces customers' design and manufacturing time.

"We are very excited to introduce the PC-1, which not only combines the best of ASSPs and FPGAS, but also significantly lower customers' ASIC design barrier," said C.J. Liang, Associate R&D Vice President of Faraday. "Moreover, all essential IP blocks are pre-integrated and pre-manufactured in the standard cell base layers, making PC-1 outperform other vendors' general purpose structured ASIC platforms, which could suffer significant die size and performance penalities."

Specifications and Features

Base array: The PC-1 platform chip integrates the FA526, a low-power 190MHz ARM architecture CPU, one USB2.0 OTG port and one USB2.0 Device port, a 10/100 Ethernet port, an encryption engine, SRAM/Flash/SDRAM memory controllers, optional 802.11b wireless LAN modem, and other system peripherals and connectivity blocks including I2C cores, UARTs, RTC, timer, interrupt controller and power management. Since many peripheral applications require sensors to capture real-life data, an 8-channel 10-bit 200 KSPS ADC is also integrated.

Programmable logics: Faraday's industry-leading Metal Programmable Cell Array (MPCA) has 70% of the density and 90% of the performance of standard cells. It allows customers to program their own designs using the top three metal layers. In the PC-1 there are one million MPCA gates, 60 KByte memories, 153 pins of Programmable I/Os, and connections for AHB/APB Masters and Slaves.

The platform chip comes with a set of comprehensive software and hardware development tools, which include: Linux and WinCE.Net operating systems, IDE (compiler/assembler/linker), companion IP drivers, ICE, IA protocols, evaluation boards, and documentation.

"There are hundreds of peripheral applications with 100,000 units or less annual volume which require low NRE cost and fast turnaround time. Faraday's PC-1 is the best fit for these markets," said Dr. George Hwang, R&D and Marketing Vice President of Faraday. "We'll keep rolling out more Composer products to serve the fast growing needs for platforms of specific applications."

Availability and Pricing

Engineering samples of the PC-1 will be available on June 2005. Manufactured in UMC's 0.18um process and packaged in 308-/388-/484-pin FBGA, the PC-1 chips take only 25-day turn-around time. The typical NRE is $144,000 and the chip is priced at $13 in 10,000 piece quantities. For more information about the PC-1 structured ASIC, please visit http://www.faraday-tech.com/PeripheralComposer .

About the Composer Product Line

Faraday's Composer family is application specific structured ASIC platforms which embedded all necessary IP blocks in the pre-manufactured base arrays, and allow customers add their own logic designs on the top three metal layers to create differentiated chips at a fraction of NRE fee and turn-around time of traditional ASICs. Faraday's current Composer offerings include the NetComposer (NC) for networking and communication markets, and the PeripheralComposer (PC) for peripheral interface chips.

About Faraday Technology Corporation

Faraday Technology Corporation is a leading silicon IP and fabless ASIC vendor. The company's broad IP portfolio includes 32-bit RISC CPUs, USB 2.0, Ethernet, Serial ATA, and PCI-Express. With more than 500 employees and 2004 revenue of $159 million, Faraday is one of the largest fabless ASIC companies in the Asia-Pacific region, and it also has a significant presence in other markets, worldwide. Headquartered in Taiwan, Faraday has service and support offices around the world, including the U.S., Japan, Europe, and China. For more information, please visit: http://www.faraday-tech.com .

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