Posted: 8/10/98

NEC Electronics Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and microprocessor-core provider ARM Ltd. (Cambridge, England) are working together to develop a memory controller to interface with NEC's new 64-Mbit virtual channel synchronous DRAM (VC SDRAM). Separately, NEC has announced a core partnership with logic-emulation company Quickturn Design Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).

According to NEC and ARM, the memory controller will enable system-on-chip devices powered by ARM processors to interface with NEC's new VC SDRAM, resulting in an increase in system performance of up to 50 percent and a reduction in memory power consumption of about 30 percent.

The companies expect the power and performance benefits will be attractive to designers of mobile phones, hand-held computers and other mobile/portable computing products, including products based on Microsoft's Windows CE and Symbian's EPOC32 operating systems.

The memory controller macrocell is expected to be released in the fourth quarter of this year and can be licensed from ARM in synthesizable VHDL and Verilog. It is compliant with the AMBA bus.

Meanwhile, as part of its recently announced alliance with logic-emulation company Quickturn, NEC is developing a component adapter board with a V850 microcontroller core that will be compatible with Quickturn's System Realizer emulation system.

The new solution, which NEC said will be available soon, will allow NEC's cell-based ASIC customers designing with the 32-bit, RISC V850 core to perform verification and debug using Quickturn's environment.

The agreement also marks NEC's entry into Quickturn's Affinity Partnership Program.

Library vendor Virtual Silicon Technology (Sunnyvale, Calif.) and tool company Library Technologies Inc. (Saratoga, Calif.) have entered into a technology and marketing agreement under which Virtual Silicon will incorporate Library Technologies' library development tools into its own modeling and characterization system. Also, the two companies will collaborate on enhancing their respective modeling capabilities.

Virtual Silicon plans to combine Library Technologies' cell design and verification tools with its own Prism technology, which the company licensed from Symbios Logic.

The companies said Virtual Silicon has installed over half a million dollars' worth of Library Technologies' products in its characterization and modeling laboratory thus far, and the two companies have agreed to collaborate on future enhancements to their respective technologies in order to address the needs of very deep-submicron process technologies of 0.18 micron and below.

The two also plan to collaborate on extending their capabilities into full block characterization and modeling.

Virtual Silicon has agreed to promote the use of Library Technologies' products to its customers via its worldwide sales channels and partners.

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