Freescale has finally decided what to do with its ColdFire range
of 32-bit microcontrollers and licensed the technology to chip
intellectual property (IP) specialist, IPextreme to sell to other
system-on-chip makers.
The move will reassure the market, which will benefit from future
development in the family. “The ability to license ColdFire cores,
available now for the first time in the 27-year history of the
architecture, will give embedded designers greater choice and
flexibility in their Asic designs,” said Tony Massimini, chief of
technology at Semico Research.
“The licensing programme will also help expand the market for
ColdFire architecture within the embedded control community, and
help broaden the availability of third-party ecosystem support for
the architecture,” said Massimini.
IPextreme will license and support the V2 ColdFire core to Asic
designers to integrate the core and peripherals into a single chip,
to be followed by additional ColdFire cores in 2007 and beyond.
Freescale parts are based on the V3 architecture, while the V4
architecture has been specified but not implemented.
“ColdFire has a rich heritage in the embedded market, and we are
pleased to bring the architecture to a broader audience through our
IP commercialization program,” said Warren Savage, CEO of
IPextreme.
Freescale ran a marketing campaign earlier this year to revitalise
the ColdFire line. “The ColdFire licensing program is a key
milestone in our Controller Continuum roadmap, broadening and
deepening our market penetration within the 32bit control
industry,” said Mike McCourt, v-p and general manager of
Freescale’s Microcontroller Division. “The licensing programme
gives customers the design freedom and flexibility to develop
application-specific solutions that provide control, connectivity
and security for a wide array of consumer and industrial
products.”
Asic designs based on the V2 core will be software-compatible with
all ColdFire standard products and cycle accurate with V2-based
devices. In a 130nm process, the core runs at 166MHz and is
supported by the CodeWarrior tools and those from third-party
partners, such as Green Hills Software, Mentor Graphics and Wind
River Systems.