LONDON -- Alchemy Semiconductor Inc. is ready to demonstrate its new high-performance, low-power Au1000 processor, the Austin-based company announced Monday.
The chip, based on the MIPS architecture licensed from MIPS Technologies Inc., has a clock frequency of 500MHz and consumes 900 milliwatts of power, Alchemy Semiconductor said in a statement. An even bigger selling point for manufacturers of portable devices is that the processor uses only 500 milliwatts of power when running at 400MHz, the company said.
The chip is expected to be priced at US$39 in quantities of 10,000, and will be available on a limited basis beginning in February, with a general release coming in the second quarter, Alchemy Semiconductor said.
The high integration systems-on-a-chip manufacturer will publically demonstrate the Au1000 chip from Feb. 6 to Feb. 8 at the Microsoft Corp. Windows Embedded Developers Conference in Las Vegas, Alchemy Semiconductor said.
The Au1000 chip set, originally announced in June of last year, is based on a 32-bit MIPS architecture and the embedded microprocessor is designed to power a wide variety of Internet and wireless products such as handheld PDAs (personal digital assistants), routers and line cards, the company said.
Furthermore, the chip will run operating systems including Linux, Microsoft Windows CE and Wind River Systems Inc.'s VxWorks, Alchemy Semiconductor said.
Alchemy Semiconductor was originally part of Cadence Design Systems Inc. until it was spun off as a separate company last May.
