Posted: 9/21/98

By focusing on embedded applications for very fast 8-bit microcontroller, Scenix Semiconductor Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) has already taken a radical step for a startup. But this fall, the company will add another innovative wrinkle as it offers free downloadable soft cores on its Web site. The cores, which can be implemented in the company's 8-bit controllers using on-chip flash memory, customize the controllers for vertical applications such as modem and digital-answering devices in telephony markets.

The Scenix SX devices are object-code compatible with the PIC family from Microchip Technology Inc., but that is where similarities with most 8-bit MCUs end. Stephan Thaler, who joined Scenix after several years with National Semiconductor Corp.'s COP MCU program, said that the startup deliberately elected to develop a controller with a baseline speed of 50 Mips, extensible to much higher speeds, to serve deterministic real-time needs.

"It may be true that the 8-bit market is the most brutal, but achieving 50 Mips in our first rev allows us to compete with many 16-bit devices for the same apps," Thaler said.

The downloadable cores, offered free to SX customers at www.scenix.com, could shake up the intellectual-property world by reducing the margins that independent hard- and soft-macro vendors charge for their designs. Scenix calls its code Virtual Peripherals and plans to have at least 75 downloadable library elements available by the end of the year. Those include such functions as a PWM output and a sigma-delta A/D converter.

In its general-purpose peripheral functions, which include a comparator and watchdog timer, the SX28IC controller resembles a typical 8-bit device of the HPC or COP family. But other elements, such as a four-stage pipeline, resemble a 16-bit controller. The controller also has 2k x 12 of flash E2PROM to support downloadable functions.

"The Virtual Peripheral indicates a direction the industry expects to move in, and we simply responded to customer demands earlier than most of the competition," Thaler said.

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