IBM on Thursday stepped up its efforts in advanced communications ICs and system-on-a-chip (SOC) designs by announcing a 550-MHz PowerPC processor core for routers, hubs, and switches.IBM Microelectronics also expanded its on-chip bus offering for SOC designs to a 128-bit-wide format, and the division touted its ability to make

copper-based ICs, announcing that one million PowerPC processors have been shipped with copperinterconnects. “IBM’s new PowerPC 440 core can achieve 1,000-MIPS at typical performance levels while running at 550 HMz,” said Ron Tessitore, PowerPC development manager, at IBM Microelectronics in Research Triangle Park, N.C.“This is the fastest embedded processor core in the industry today,” said Tessitore, who added that it is at least one-third more powerful than Intel’s new 166-MHz IXP1200 StrongArm RISC architecture.The new PowerPC 440 will be fabricated in IBM’s 0.18-micron copper CMOS process technology with initial designs expected to be sampled in the second quarter of 2000, said Dean Parker, product manager for IBM’s Pervasive Computing unit. Volume production of customer designs based on the 440 core and the new 128-bit CoreConnect bus will begin in the fourth quarter next year, he said.The new PowerPC core is small, fitting in 4 square millimeters of silicon. The new RISC core is compliant with IBM’s “Book E” enhancements to the PowerPC architecture, which maintains compatibility with existing designs but adds support for embedded applications.IBM’s expansion of the CoreConnect bus to 128 bits will help remove design barriers in system-on-a-chip ASICs and custom ICs, according to product managers. In June, IBM announced the CoreConnect bus architecture and made it available for free to the industry. Initially, CoreConnect had 32- and 64-bit buses, but now IBM is adding the 128-bit structure to support higher performance and the new 440 core.(c) CMPnet