Advanced RISC Machines Ltd’s ARM RISC chip is to be used as the basis for mass storage components supplied by two of the largest semiconductor suppliers to the storage industry, it emerged yesterday. Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Group and Cirrus Logic Inc have both signed letters of intent with Cambridge, UK-based ARM to adopt ARM’s open core processor architecture for future generations of mass storage integrated circuits. The two will work with ARM to add design requirements needed for electro-mechanical applications such as real-time emulation and advanced DSP support, and add them to the processor roadmap. The move follows demand from disk drive manufacturers looking to combine functionality that currently needs several separate ICs onto a single chip, such as the read channel, hard-disk controller, micro-controller and servo controller. That would both increase performance and cut manufacturing costs. Using an open core from a company such as ARM is a way of achieving single chip integration without locking storage manufacturers in too closely with a proprietary processor. Individual microcontroller firmware and servo algorithms could be integrated with the core as mix and match components. ARM currently has 29 semiconductor licensees, including most of the semiconductor suppliers to the mass storage industry. Over the next few months, the three companies say they will concentrate on the development of emulation and debugging tools aimed at real-time electromechanical systems, and on extending ARM’s digital signal processing capabilities. Last year, ARM took a 45% stake in Los Gatos, California-based Palmchip Corp, a designer of mass storage controller cores to boost its own system-on-chip efforts (CI No 3,130). It will use Palmchip’s ARM-based hard disk drive controller core IP and co-verification tools on the effort. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
