TSMC Leads Foundry Industry with High-Demand ARM CPU Cores for SoC Design

 
"TSMC expects to be the first foundry to implement this ARM® core for our customers," said Peyman Kazemkhani, Marketing Director for the IP Alliance. "We believe this will be a great addition to the TSMC IP Alliance portfolio, as it will allow designers to quickly realize the benefits of system-on-chip design."

The ARM922T core is a new member of the ARM9[tm] Thumb® family of microprocessors, and offers designers a high-performance architecture for price/power sensitive portable applications running MP3 audio, Java, Voice recognition and MPEG-4 video. The solution is a 32-bit microprocessor macrocell that combines the ARM9TDMI[tm] core with 8k instruction and 8k data caches, making it ideal for system-on-chip (SoC) designs that support industry proven operating systems including EPOC, Linux and WindowsCE. TSMC is actively engaging with two customers to manufacture products based on the ARM922T core.

"When ARM introduced its Foundry Partner Program in March 2000, we enabled industry-leading foundries such as TSMC to license our most popular architecture: the ARM7TDMI® core, which has been licensed by more than 35 of our silicon and system partners," said Antonio J. Viana, business manager for the ARM Foundry Partner Program. "By adding the ARM922T core to our Foundry Program product offerings, we have expanded TSMC's ability, through its IP Alliance, to address a broader range of high-performance applications including set-top boxes, networking solutions and media-intensive Internet devices."

TSMC's IP Alliance includes many of the world's leading providers of intellectual property cores for system-on-chip design. The alliance is further supported by TSMC's Library Alliance, EDA Alliance and Design Center Alliance, all of which combine to create the most complete and extensive design services portfolio in the foundry industry.

ARM is the industry's leading provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC microprocessor solutions. The company licenses high-performance, low-cost, power-efficient RISC processors, peripherals, and system-chip designs to leading international electronics companies. ARM also provides comprehensive support required in developing a complete system. ARM's microprocessor cores are rapidly becoming the volume RISC standard in such markets as portable communications, hand-held computing, multi-media and embedded solutions. More information about ARM is available at www.arm.com

TSMC is the world's largest dedicated semiconductor foundry, providing the industry's leading manufacturing capacity, process technology, library and IP options and other leading-edge foundry services. TSMC is constructing or operating 11 fabs and has substantial capacity commitments at three additional facilities jointly operated by TSMC and its partners. In 2000, TSMC expects to have the capacity for nearly 3.4 million 8-inch equivalent wafers, increasing to 4.7 million wafers in 2001. In addition, TSMC recently became the first foundry to license its technology to a leading IDM, thereby establishing itself as an acknowledged world leader in process technology. Fabrication processes offered by TSMC include CMOS logic, mixed-mode, volatile and non-volatile memory, and BiCMOS. TSMC's corporate headquarters are in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan. More information about TSMC is available through the World Wide Web at http://www.tsmc.com.
 
 

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