Armed with approval from the Federal Trade Commission over its acquisition of the StrongARM embedded processor, part of its wider DEC Alpha purchase (CI No 3,397), Intel Corp now says it intends to use StrongARM to extend its market segmentation strategy. It intends to use StrongARM for market sectors such as PC companions, smart mobile phones and mobile point of sale devices, digital set-top box products and web-enabled desktop screen phones. Embedded control applications such as soft modem banks, high performance storage and RAID adapter cards and switches and routers will also be targeted. Intel’s Ron Smith, vice president and general manager of Intel’s Computing Enhancement Group said Intel is investing in design enhancements and a ramped-up marketing push, accelerating the development of products based on the first generation SA-1 StrongARM product line, which includes the SA-110, SA-1100 and the forthcoming SA- 1500, due to be detailed at the Hot Chips conference next month. The SA-1500 is a 300MHz part with an attached media processor. Intel says it’s now working on the design of the second generation SA-2. StrongARM, originally designed by DEC, is based on the Advanced RISC Machines Ltd ARM core, and it has the distinction of being the only chip in Intel’s catalog not developed internally, and with an instruction set not under Intel’s control. It gives Intel access to a chip that runs Windows CE, the Microsoft embedded operating system that wasn’t built around Intel’s x86 architecture. Although Smith called StrongARM complementary to our existing microprocessor product lines, it’s hard to see where Intel’s own i960 RISC part, aimed at the same markets, fits into the picture.
