Toshiba America Electronics Components Inc isn’t going to let the likes Hitachi, Advanced RISC Machines and LSI Logic have the potentially lucrative market for low-power, low-cost RISC chips that will turn up in many set-top and other consumer devices all to themselves. It has implemented the Mips 16 instruction set found in the Silicon Graphics Inc chip subsidiary’s 32-bit Mips R3000A processor in a 16-bit TX19 family of embedded microcontrollers. Toshiba says that at $17.50 for 1,000-up beginning next March, TX19 products will match CISC devices in price, as well as other RISC-based embedded parts. The TX19 will also be used to drive other ASIC devices. Like LSI Logic, which already uses the Mips 16 core in its TinyRISC, Toshiba has taken a 32-bit core and used 16-bit instructions to reduce code density by 40%. It operates at 34MHz and up to 3.6V.
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