Asia PR News

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 2 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ –

Silicon-Sharing Fits 200K Gate Design Into 40K Gate FPSLIC II’s,
Cuts Power Drain by 97%

Atmel Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML), a global leader in the development and
fabrication of advanced semiconductor solutions, announced today the
introduction of its AVR-based FPSLIC(R) II, the industry’s first family of
dynamically reconfigurable systems-on-chips (SoCs) allowing multiple
interfaces, peripherals and/or operators to share the same silicon at different
times.

"Silicon sharing" is extremely important in power-and space-constrained
systems, such as new generation mobile phones, PDAs, notebook computers and
printer/fax machines. Increasingly these devices must perform multiple
functions (e.g. camera, MP3 player, phone) without sacrificing battery life,
product size or product cost.

FPSLIC II’s silicon-sharing capability is enhanced by Atmel’s back-end,
reconfiguration EDA tools. The tools are the first to automate the
implementation, timing and control of the silicon-sharing process. Previously,
the design of silicon-sharing systems was essentially impossible because, even
though some FPGAs can be reconfigured during operation, until now, there have
been no tools to automate reconfiguration control and timing. Atmel is the
first programmable SoC vendor to provide such EDA support.

The FPSLIC II dynamically reconfigurable programmable SoC integrates a
25 MIPS, 8-bit AVR processor, with 36 KB program/data SRAM, a hardware
multiplier, peripherals and a dynamically reconfigurable FPGA, with 256 to 2300
core cells. A single piece of silicon can implement multiple, interchangeable
peripherals, computational operators and bus interfaces, including UART, SDIO,
PCI, PCMCIA, HDLC and Ethernet.

The main obstacles to silicon-sharing has always been ensuring that the
correct functionality is loaded into the FPGA at the correct time and that
functions are not loaded on top of each other. Since either of these can cause
catastrophic system failure, adding new features has typically required the
addition of dedicated silicon (i.e. a larger FPGA), increasing both power
consumption and system cost. Atmel has solved this problem by placing a
configuration controller, two DMA controllers, a dedicated FPGA-to-AVR
interface and a "virtual socket" in the FPGA portion of the programmable SoC.
The "virtual socket" is populated from a library of previously designed
peripherals, interfaces or operators that share the same silicon.

Atmel provides a library of reference designs for interfaces, peripherals
and hardware accelerators that includes Ethernet, memory, SPI, SDIO, multimedia
card, DMA, speech synthesis, ADPCM, audio codec interfaces and DES/triple DES
encryption algorithms. The company will introduce a library of pre-routed
"drag-and-drop" co-processors and interfaces later this year. Designers may
also use Atmel’s System Designer EDA tool to develop custom IP for silicon
sharing.

Reconfiguration Process — The on-chip AVR and reconfiguration controller
manage the reconfiguration process. Based on inputs to the Reconfiguration
Designer tool, the configuration controller signals the AVR when it is time to
reconfigure the virtual socket, which IP block to load, the number of cycles
required for execution and other constraints. At the time the design is done,
System Designer checks that all the required library elements exist, places and
routes the design and generates appropriate bitstreams for the entire hardware
design, including the virtual socket for the reconfigurable elements. The
reconfigurable elements (peripherals, interfaces, etc.) are individually placed
and routed to fit the virtual socket. System Designer then assembles all
bitstreams into a "master" bitstream, with memory pointers, that is stored in
external memory.

FPSLIC II’s virtual socket can be reconfigured at any time during system
operation from a library of pre-compiled IP cores stored in external flash
memory. At 25 MHz, reconfiguration takes less than 9 ms.

Design Flow — The IP libraries for reconfigurable designs are done in the
same way as ordinary FPGA designs. Existing VHDL or Verilog designs can be used
as library elements or designers can use Atmel’s System Designer FPGA design
tool suite to implement custom peripherals, arithmetic operators, interfaces or
control logic. Designs can also be developed in C-based Electronic System level
and synthesized into an HDL tool using the Celoxica(R) tool suite. There is no
silicon penalty for using Celoxica for computational functions and about a 10%
penalty for using it to design interface or control logic.

Higher Throughput for Lower Power, Less Cost — FPSLIC II power consumption
is s 50 uA in standby and 2-3mA/MHz during operation. With a 4 MHz clock, the
8-bit, hardware-accelerated FPSLIC II and external memory consume 9.2 mA and
can execute the same functions as, a 200 MHz 32-bit RISC processor with four
times the power drain. Using an FPGA without silicon-sharing would require a
200,000 gate device with power drain of 300 mA — 32 times the power
consumption of FPSLIC II.

Pricing and Availability — FPSLIC II family devices are available now,
with FPGA densities, from 256 to 2300 core cells. in Green lead-free 144-pin
TQFP and 208PQFP packages, in industrial temp — 40 degrees C + 85 degrees C.
Prices are as follows in quantities of 100,000 units:

— AT94K05AL-25BQU 256 core cells $4.50
— AT94K10AL-25BQU 512 core cells $6.90
— AT94K40AL-25DQU 2300 core cells $12.90

Footnote:
1: These tools were jointly developed by Atmel and the ReCONF2
(EU-IST-2001-34016) project with the cooperation of the Czech Academy of
Sciences’ Institute for Information Theory and Automation (UTIA).

About Atmel
Atmel is a worldwide leader in the design and manufacture of
microcontrollers, advanced logic, mixed-signal, nonvolatile memory and radio
frequency (RF) components. Leveraging one of the industry’s broadest
intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the
electronics industry with complete system solutions. Focused on consumer,
industrial, security, communications, computing and automotive markets, Atmel
ICs can be found Everywhere You Are(R).

NOTE: Atmel(R), logo and combinations thereof, FPSLIC(R) and others, are
registered trademarks and Everywhere You Are(R) and others are
trademarks of Atmel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other terms and
product names may be trademarks of others.

Information:
Atmel’s product information may be retrieved at www.atmel.com.

Press Contacts:

Vicki McCann, Director of Marketing Communications
Phone: 719-540-1724, Email: vmccann@cso.atmel.com

Veronique Sablereau, Corporate Communications Manager - Europe
Phone: +33 1 30 60 70 68, Fax: +49 71 31 67 24 23
Email: veronique.sablereau@atmel.com

SOURCE: Atmel Corporation

CONTACT: Vicki McCann, Director of Marketing Communications
+1-719-540-1724 or vmccann@cso.atmel.com

Veronique Sablereau, Corporate Communications Manager - Europe
+33 1 30 60 70 68 or fax +49 71 31 67 24 23 or
veronique.sablereau@atmel.com

both of Atmel Corporation

Web site: http://www.atmel.com

(ATML)