Motorola signs 68K and ColdFire microprocessor licensing agreement with Hewlett-Packard

Business Wire, July 24, 1996

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 24, 1996--Motorola's (NYSE:MOT) High Performance Embedded Systems Division Wednesday announced that they have signed a non-exclusive agreement with Hewlett Packard Co.'s (NYSE:HWP) Integrated Circuit Business Division to license Motorola's 68000, 68020, 68030 and ColdFire variable-length RISC microprocessor cores.

HP has used and will be able to continue to use these microprocessor cores to build integrated products such as certain computer peripherals. The agreement will enable Motorola and HP to work together to provide solutions across a wide range of HP products.

"We are extremely fortunate to be able to form this kind of relationship with HP leveraging our highly successful 68000 and next-generation VL-RISC ColdFire microprocessor cores," said Jim George, corporate vice president and general manger, High Performance Embedded Systems Division, Motorola. "Additionally, this agreement is indicative of HP's confidence in our technology and our ability to be a successful long-term partner."

The licensing agreement provides a second source of supply for essential microprocessor components in a large number of HP's products. In addition, the agreement allows HP to build or modify products as needed to meet internal design requirements.

"We are very pleased with our relationship with Motorola," said Mike Matson, general manager of HP's Integrated Circuit Business Division. "We have a long and successful licensing history with the 68000 core, and we're excited about the prospects of the ColdFire variable-length instruction RISC cores. The licensing of ColdFire will be important to the development of HP's products."

ColdFire Family

ColdFire processors occupy the "sweet spot" between CISC and conventional, fixed-length RISC, where an optimum balance between code density and transistor count can be achieved. By using Motorola's unique Variable-Length (VL) RISC technology, the ColdFire architecture combines the simplicity of conventional 32-bit RISC with a memory-saving variable-length instruction set.

ColdFire's instruction set, which is an optimized subset of Motorola's 680x0 family, allows engineers to build on existing product designs, leverage design engineering expertise, and bring new RISC-based products to market more quickly and with lower costs.

In addition, designers utilizing ColdFire processors have access to the widest base of integrated tool solutions in the market including compilers, debuggers, real-time operating systems, and hardware tools.

The ColdFire product family includes the MCF5102, the first in the ColdFire family; the MCF5202, which combines a ColdFire core with an integrated 2-Kbyte unified cache; and the MCF5206, which includes a DRAM controller, chip selects, an interrupt controller, timer, DUART, parallel port and Mbus interface.

Motorola is continuing to expand its module library while developing products with even higher levels of integration. Higher performance products are also in design which, over the next few years, will extend the ColdFire processor performance well beyond 100 MIPS.

Hewlett-Packard Co. is a leading global manufacturer of computing, communications and measurement products and services recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 108,300 employees and had revenues of $31.5 billion in its 1995 fiscal year.

With 1995 worldwide sales of $8.5 billion, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector is committed to enabling its customers' success by providing systems solutions, processes and services to anticipate and respond to changing technologies and market dynamics.

As the largest U.S.-based broad-line semiconductor supplier, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector delivers global resources, product design and development expertise and the highest-quality technology solutions to its customers. Motorola semiconductors power automobiles, communications and computing systems, and millions of other consumer products.

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