Intellectual property (IP) provider CAST is offering a range of 32-bit microprocessor cores developed by French design partner Cortus, SA.
The firm seems to be aiming the 32-bit cores somewhere on the performance curve between an 8051 or 6805 and the ARM at the high end.
"We've helped hundreds of designers succeed with 8051s," said Hal Barbour, president of CAST. "But some systems just need more horsepower."
Barbour believes that in the past designers were limited by choice when looking for higher performance than 8- or 16-bit cores. “Those designers have had little choice but to live with the technical and business overheads of an advanced 32-bit processor without actually using all its capabilities," said Barbour.
The APS cores use a Risc architecture in a full 32-bit design and benchmarks at 0.6DMIPS/MHz. But it requires as few as 7,000 gates in a FPGA design.
Power consumption is specified at 18µW/MHz.
Two APS processors are shipping now, APS2 and APS3. The APS2 core is a general-purpose processor while the APS3 core uses the same 32-bit architecture, but is optimised to achieve more compact programming code for applications sensitive to code density.
The APS processors were designed for high- level programming using C and C++, and an adapted version of the GNU Compiler Project (GCC) tool set is included with the cores. Unusually complete, this tool set includes a graphical debugger that connects through a JTAG link or via the serial port on a PC, a comprehensive instruction set simulator (ISS), and a standard library of C routines for embedded systems.