» Flash memory in various configurations and flavors dominates this issues product selections in this category. Microcontrollers -- some with flash on board -- and DSPs also make their presence felt.

(1)
RENESAS TECHNOLOGY AMERICA, INC
Faster Writes Up the Antes
eeProductCenter's Jon Gabay says: "Aimed at multimedia products requiring large storage capacity and fast recording speeds, the R1FV04G13R (512Mbit x 8-bit) and R1FV04G14R (256Mbit x 16-bit) flash devices are fast enough to record a 2-hour movie in about two minutes (using pre encoded MPEG-4) and dense enough to do it on a single chip. In addition to being the first built with the new 90-nanometer process, they are also the world's fastest to write to. "
Readers say: » "Looks like an enabling technology for a "movie iPod"." » "Very important development, but I'll wait until the price comes down." » "Priced too high for consumer products." » "Needless to say these are state of the art memory chips with the speed and bit range to allow large amounts of data transfer. The capacity and speed is needed in today's products. I give it a A-plus." » "This addresses a difficult problem we have with storage of digital video -- lots of digital video." » "I believe AG-AND type flash memories have a huge potential for audio/video recorder/players market." » "The digital video recorder market is going to find high density flash storage a real boon." » "It's great to keep seeing technology still advancing in the field of memory storage. More and more people are using devices that require big memory cards, and this is definitely a step in the positive direction." » "Erase and write speed are the prime requirements for my use." » "I was almost ready to write off these new devices, until I saw that they use the same command-level interface as existing NAND flash. This backward compatibility, however cumbersome, is essential for Renesas to get their foot in the door..." » "It's not a technological breakthrough. It is just a density increase. The AND memory folks require 3 bit error correction per block and the NAND memory folks require 1 bit error correction per block. AND controllers are much harder to build because of this." » "New performance benchmarks for digital devices. "
USABILITY RANK: 1

(2)
FREESCALE SEMICONDUCTOR
MCU touts complete 10/100Mbps Ethernet on a chip
eeProductCenter's Marty Gold says: "The MC9S12NE64 is the first in the Freescale series of 16-bit microcontrollers with embedded Ethernet connectivity. The device has been designed to provide the memory headroom that gives end customers additional functionality as needs grow. "
Readers say: » "As everything becomes IP-based in the area of control, this solution will fit wired products very well. But are wired products the way to go?" » "The number of I/O pins, Ethernet built-in, flash and RAM onboard make this a nice little processor to consider for embedded designs." » "Integrating the Ethernet PHY and MAC layers into this workhorse embedded microcontroller is fantastic. We just wondered if we could have one with CAN controller AND ethernet?" » "To be succesful, a chip with embedded Ethernet or USB needs to come with pre-integrated protocol stack software." » "It is nice to have all the advance communication interfaces on chip, it is really good to see that. Expecting more to be added on chip in near future."
USABILITY RANK: 2

(3)
LSI LOGIC
LSI Logic launches Sub-$4 DSP unit
eeProductCenter's Marty Gold says: "The LSI403LC DSP offers a maximum throughput of 480 million instructions per second, 96K bytes of on-chip memory, and it operates at less than 40 milliwatts of power running at 120 MHz. "
Readers say: » "There are much cheaper DSPs on the market, this is not a major breakthrough. Downside to those parts is mask-ROM and limited instruction set, of course." » "Great price for performance. Most DSPs are getting more and more dense. This is great for low-end cost-sensitive applications in some of my telecom products." » "Interesting as an ASIC core, but as a standard product it needs on-board ADC to compete with the value offered by competing low-end DSP parts." » "Low cost, high performance DSP means more products will contain DSPs. The availability in four formats is very attractive: standard product, ASIC core, Platform ASIC and licensable IP. One more critical issue will be the tool."
USABILITY RANK: 4

(4)
MICROCHIP TECHNOLOGY
PIC MCU boasts CAN 2.0B interface, 64 Kbytes of flash
eeProductCenter's Marty Gold says: "Among the impressive features of the four new 8-bit microcontrollers (PIC18F4680, PIC18F2680, PIC18F4585 and PIC18F2585)aimed at the automotive electronics market is the on-chip 48 Kbytes or 64 Kbytes of flash program memory in a tiny 28-pin package. They support the popular CAN 2.0B interface. "
Readers say: » "All the right stuff, definitely consider for CAN project." » "Freescale and Microchip look to be going head to head for the low end CAN market." » "CAN interface makes it much more useful. USB would be nice instead of serial, though." » "I use Microchip parts now, and this is an attractive addition to the prodcut line.I will have to sample a few."
USABILITY RANK: 3

(5)
SST
Fast Serial Flash Pushes Densities For Targeted Applications
eeProductCenter's Jon Gabay says: "The new SST25LF080A is based on the company's proprietary high-performance SuperFlash technology which carries some interesting benefits. First, the NOR architected split-gate cell topology uses a reliable thick-oxide process with fewer manufacturing steps. Yes, this lowers cost, but also boosts data retention and yields higher reliability since the Norhiem-Fowler junction voltage is reduced leading to slower breakdown of the isolating layer. "
Readers say: » "Higher speeds are nice. Especially with a serial Flash" » "I am a FPGA designer and see this part as an alternative to Xilinx solutions for serial bit stream download into FPGAs." » "The 8 uA standby current draw is nice, but for those of us who use FETs to completely power the chip down when not in use, the power-up time would be good to know." » "Definitely a big step in the right direction -- boosting transfer speeds. However,I need to be able to boot from such a device in order to really gain the space advantage it offers." » "Serial Flash is replacing parallel Flash in more and more applications where the interface is to an ASIC or system-on-chip (SOC) which includes an embeded microcontroller and RAM. The serial Flash contents are downloaded to the RAM at power-up and then are executed from the on-chip RAM for faster processing speeds. As a side benefit, the number of pins required for the Flash interface drops dramatically (from parallel to serial interface)." » "The SPI-compatible interface will make this part easy to use. The cost of the part seems very reasonable." » "Lacks the features of Atmel Data Flash, yet same price." » "Good to hear about this new product. "
USABILITY RANK: 5

(6)
FUJITSU MICROELECTRONICS AMERICA, INC.
Fujitsu's 8-bit MCU runs at 100 nanosec. on full CISC architecture
eeProductCenter's Marty Gold says: "Fujitsu Microelectronics America's newest 8-bit microcontroller series delivers processing speeds as low as 100 nanoseconds. The F2MC-8FX series features a minimum instruction cycle three to four times faster than Fujitsu's F2MC-8L MCU series, and a pipeline bus architecture providing double the execution speed. "
Readers say: » "Too many other solutions available" » "Call me a traditionalist, but processor speeds are specified in terms of frequency (e.g. 10MHz) rather than clock or instruction period (e.g. 100nS)."
USABILITY RANK: 8

(7)
TEXAS INSTRUMENTS
DSP toolset optimizes code for speed and size
eeProductCenter's Marty Gold says: "Texas Instruments latest release of its Code Composer Studio Integrated Development Environment (IDE) Version 3.0 for TMS320C6000 appears to be a significant software upgrade for developers of DSP -- based systems. "
Readers say: » "I think it's great. Anytime you can automate tasks and vary options and see what those options will do is wonderful" » "Code optimization is critical in many of today's high speed embedded environments." » "C6x is a very complicated DSP. With so many pipeline stages and so many constraints, it is very difficult to optimize the code. The toolset is very good for a beginner. But for an experienced programmer how much value the new tool can provide is still questionable." » "The profile tool is very useful."
USABILITY RANK: 6

(8)
SPANSION
Second Generation - Mirror Bit Flash Memory
eeProductCenter's Jon Gabay says: "Several manufacturers have pioneered specialized flavors of NOR Flash which increase density. Two main approaches are Multi Level Cell (MLC) and Mirror bit. Mirror bit is getting a boost thanks to the announcement of the second generation flavor of this technology from Spansion, a joint effort between AMD and Fujitsu. So confident are they, they state the new Spansion Flash supports phones with high-resolution cameras, streaming video, and cutting edge games and applications with a cost structure so compelling that Spansion believes MirrorBit technology will become the next industry standard in Flash memory. "
Readers say: » "I would have liked to read a better description and comparison about the two approaches (MLC and Mirror Bit) in the article. Also, for the first few paragraphs, Jon Gabay's response gave me the impression that he didn't like the part (he didn't say that, but his intro and side-track into NAND tech gave me that impression); when he got back to the Spansion parts, I could tell that I'd been wrong in my interpretation." » "Awesome product.I hope to use it in the future."
USABILITY RANK: 7

(9)
MAXWELL
Targeting Hi Rel Core Designs With DRAM
eeProductCenter's Jon Gabay says: "Maxwell is currently the only vendor to the space industry that can provide die-based radiation-hardened SDRAM components. By a proprietary radiation shielding technology the new SDRAM products are fully qualified and radiation-hardened for use in space. "
Readers say: » "Too costly, and I have heat concerns for the devices in the middle" » "This RAM seems well suited for future work in space. The key to my vote for this product is.. in Jon Gabay's words, 'Maxwell is currently the only vendor to the space industry that can provide die-based radiation-hardened SDRAM components. '" » "Well implemented."
USABILITY RANK: 9

(10)
TOSHIBA CORPORATION
Toshiba's 64-bit RISC MPU targets high-end set-top boxes
eeProductCenter's Marty Gold says: "Toshiba Corp.'s newest 64-bit RISC microprocessor, aimed at multifunction printers and high-end set-top boxes offers the system designers an impressive array of specifications. With 533 to 666 MHz maximum operating frequency, the new true 64-bit microprocessor called the TX9956CXBG is currently the highest performance microprocessor in the Toshiba TX System RISC general purpose product line. "
Readers say: » "Too many other solutions available in this market, most FPGA based but valid" » "I would need to know more about software development environments before I would decide to use it." » "Needs WinCE support"
USABILITY RANK: 10