LSI Logic Corp, Milpitas, California is highly delighted with the industry’s first cell-based custom ASIC technology capable of integrating 200,000 equivalent logic gates on a single chip sufficient to implement the compexity of two DEC VAX-11/780s processors a single chip. Named for its 0.7-micron CMOS channel length – equivalent to 1 micron gate length – the LCB007 is a member of the company’s family of cell-based custom circuits where all layers of the chip are customer specified from libraries and compiler design tools. The part also enables fast static RAM and ROM of up to 144K-bits and 1M-bit respectively to be used as building blocks within the chip. A standard two-input NAND gate has a typical propagation delay of 450pS, and internal toggle rates can exceed 250MHz, so that in some cases it could be used in place of ECL. Designers will also be able to embed core RISC microprocessors such as the ones from MIPS Computer Systems Inc and Sun Microsystems – both available from LSI both as standard parts and as ASIC designs – into their chips. The company reckons that by combining a 32-bit RISC megacell with 30,000 gates of random logic and more than 4Kb of RAM and 64Kb of ROM on a single ASIC will enable a designer to create a system with the performance of a Cray supercomputer in a lap-top box if he adds LSI’s floating-point accelerator and write buffer. LCB007 cell-based ASIC wafers will be fabricated at Santa Clara, California; Tsukuba; and Sidcup, Kent, and LSI Logic’s GmbH’s Braunschweig, West Germany, plant will play a key role in assembly and test of finished devices. Design libraries will be out this quarter, and first customer prototype LCB007s arrive mid-1989.
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