Motorola, Mitsubishi swapping technologies

Electronic News, Oct 14, 1996

Sunnyvale, Calif.--Motorola and Mitsubishi have agreed in principle to exchange Mitsubishi's embedded DRAM design and process technologies and M32R microprocessor technology for Motorola's ColdFire and 68EC000 microprocessor technologies.

Although final terms and conditions remain to be negotiated, the companies said that under the proposed agreement Mitsubishi would gain the rights to offer the variable-length (VL) RISC ColdFire line and 68EC000 cores as hard macros in its ASIC gate array and embedded cell libraries. Motorola would gain the rights to offer embedded DRAM as a module in its FlexCore program for inclusion in customer-specific standard cell products, which may include microprocessor cores, as well as on future standard integrated MPUs. Motorola also gains the right to offer the M32R as a hard macro in its standard cell library.

Jim George, corporate VP and GM of Motorola's Imaging and Storage Division, said the exchange proves the commitment to integration of the two companies, adding: "This exchange also underscores Motorola's commitment to making ColdFire processors an industry standard RISC solution."

The companies said that designers will be able to achieve faster time to market because the ColdFire and 68EC000 MPUs have the industry's largest installed base of development tools and will now be able to more easily integrate DRAM and processor cores in the same silicon.

"Integrating Mitsubishi's embedded DRAM and our M32R microprocessor or Motorola's ColdFire and 68EC000 microprocessor functions will yield a single chip with unprecedented design options and performance solutions," asserted John Zucker, executive VP of Mitsubishi Electronics America's Electronic Device Group.

In a joint press statement, the companies said the exchange will enable them to "jointly develop new LSI market applications including mass storage and image processing equipment."

While admitting that "Integrating the process technologies for DRAM and logic is difficult and expensive," the companies nevertheless noted that, "Mitsubishi Electric is the first company to successfully implement DRAM and a RISC microprocessor core in the same silicon with its highly-integrated 32-bit M32R processor."

Introduced last April, the M32R integrates 2 megabytes of DRAM, 2KB of cache SRAM and DSP logic functions in a single IC. Mitsubishi has also ported the Java virtual machine to the M32R.

Meanwhile, in a separate announcement, Motorola said it has reduced the prices on seven of its one-time programmable (OTP) 8-bit microcontrollers including the recently introduced 68HC708XL36, what the company terms its flagship product.