Zilog Inc has announced the Z89C00, a second-generation 16-bit digital signal processor: the Z89C00 operates at 75nS, 100nS or 200nS, and it is available at $4.75 to $18 each in 1,000-piece quantities: using a standard DSP instruction set, the Z89C00 performs a 16-bit multiply-accumulate in a single instruction cycle and a scalar multiple in one instruction; vector operation is said to be enhnaced with eight built-in hardware loop pointers for internal memory addressing, which reduces the number of instructions required to perform algorithms with sequential addressing; other features include two on-chip data random access memories, 256 by 16 bits each, a 16-bit input output port, a 16-bit program memory port and a six level stack for saving data and instructions during interrupts; samples will be available during March next year.
