LSI Logic Corp, Milpitas, California has an innovative new application-specific integrated circuit family in the shape of the LEA100K Embedded Array Series which the firm says combines the very high-density and performance characteristics of cell-based designs with the fast prototype turnaround of gate arrays: user-defined high-density cell-based structures can be embedded into the 0.7 micron channel-length HCMOS Channel-Free Compacted Array Plus devices, enabling optimised design of up to 150,000 equivalent gates using a combination of cell- and array-based methodologies, with complete prototype metalisation, assembly and test in as little as 14 days, the same time as for a gate array; embeddable memory block possibilities for LEA100K designs include high-speed statics of up to 144K-bits, multi-port RAMs having up to five ports, and contact-programmable ROMs as large as 1M-bits; the LEA100K series is available now and has already been used to create microcontrollers, set-associative caches and signal processing parts.
