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Royalty-free access to high-performance XAP 16-bit processors through MOSIS deal with Cambridge Consultants

20th July 2006

EDA Solutions Limited

ES Admin

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MOSIS has partnered with Cambridge Consultants to offer customers royalty-free access to the XAP4 and XAP5 16-bit RISC processor cores - and - customers only have to pay 20% of the nominal license fee during prototype production, the balance of the fee not being due until devices go into volume production or are sold.

XAP cores fulfil the needs of high volume, cost-sensitive applications where traditional processor architectures are not sufficiently powerful and 32-bit devices are overkill in terms of size, power consumption and cost. The processors feature privileged operating system modes, position-independent code and high code density support for real time operating systems and applications. Typical applications include short-range wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, Zigbee and Near Field Communications.

XAP processors are delivered in Verilog RTL and users can verify their systems in FPGA before proceeding to ASIC synthesis. Support comes in the form of Cambridge Consultants’ xIDE integrated software development environment, which includes GNU C compilers, instruction set simulators and debuggers.

30-day trial versions of xIDE can be downloaded from the Cambridge Consultants web site.
Cambridge Consultants’ royalty-free licensing model and the MOSIS MPW service offer a low-cost route to market for fabless semiconductor companies. The services are equally well suited to start-ups and budget-constrained design projects within larger, established semiconductor businesses. Cambridge Consultants also offers a 32-bit processor for more demanding applications.
The cores are available now with royalty-free licensing terms if desired.