Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Group has licensed the latest ARM Holdings Plc core design, the ARM10, intending to use the design as a system-on-a-chip component for mobile phones, PDAs and networking hardware applications, integrating its own DSP designs. Lucent has previously licensed the ARM7DTMI, ARM9E, ARM9TDMI, and ARM940T cores. Lucent will be the IC provider to receive ARM10 core design data for fabrication into chips. The first chips will be included on evaluation boards that ARM plans to begin shipping to partners in the fourth quarter of 1999.
The first cores produced by Lucent will deliver nearly twice the performance of their predecessors, according to ARM. The 32-bit design includes a new high-performance bus, a 32kb instruction cache and a 32kb data cache. Lucent will fabricate its first ARM10 cores using a 0.25 micron process and plans to migrate the cores to the 0.16 micron process in 2000. The 0.16 micron process core’s performance is targeted to process at 500 MIPS running at 1.5 volts, while consuming less than one watt of power.
