LSI Logic Achieves 500th Coreware(R) Design; Underscores LSI's System-On-A-Chip Leadership
Quantum Single-chip Disk Controller Shares LSI Logic Milestone
Milpitas, Calif., June 21 /PRNewswire/ -- LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE: LSI) today announced that it has delivered its 500th CoreWare(R) design to a high-volume customer, just five years after introducing the landmark design process that makes system-on-a-chip solutions a reality for a wide variety of customers competing in high-growth markets.
Quantum Corp. has the distinction of sharing LSI Logic's 500th CoreWare design milestone. LSI Logic has shipped to Quantum a highly integrated disk controller on a chip for its next-generation 200 Mbyte/second Fibre Channel hard disk drive.
"Our CoreWare library of intellectual property building blocks has transformed the global semiconductor industry," said Wilfred J. Corrigan, LSI Logic chairman and chief executive officer. "We were the first to market with a CoreWare program and have demonstrated 500 times that we can effectively reuse these intellectual property cores to provide customers with the single-chip solutions that define their end products."
LSI's track record spans 16,000 ASIC designs since its founding in 1981. When LSI first introduced the CoreWare design strategy of amassing an impressive library of intellectual property building blocks in 1994, the rest of the industry was producing simple gate array solutions. The company's CoreWare methodology has spawned a series of system-on-a-chip designs that define dozens of end-products for high-volume customers.
"Talking about single-chip systems is an easy process, but actually delivering all of the required elements on a single chip to customers is a very complex undertaking," said John Daane, LSI Logic executive vice president of Communications, Computer and ASIC Products. "We have made the investment in reusable IP cores, process technology, world class manufacturing, design methodology, engineering expertise and vertical markets, and it has paid off for LSI Logic and its customers 500 times and counting."
Daane noted that CoreWare-based designs represent approximately 30 percent of LSI Logic's present revenues, and that figure is expected to grow to 50 percent in the coming quarters.
LSI Logic's single-chip design for Quantum's disk controller will be utilized in Quantum's next-generation 200 Mbyte/second Fibre Channel hard disk drive.
"Quantum's customers demand the highest levels of reliability from our disk drives," said Ted Deffenbaugh, strategic marketing director for Quantum's Hard Disk Drive Group. "LSI Logic's system-on-a-chip makes these reliability improvements possible through a new level of electronics integration. LSI's CoreWare program, process technology and quality manufacturing mean we can easily leverage this reliability into Quantum's future disk drives."
Embedded on a single ASIC is LSI Logic's Merlin(TM) Fibre Channel controller core, TinyRISC(R) MIPS CPU core, two GigaBlazea gigabit per second serial transceiver cores and custom logic. By leveraging LSI Logic's Fibre Channel protocol, Quantum has accelerated design cycles and produced a very compact single chip to meet shrinking disk drive form factor requirements. Prototypes were received and tested, and worked Right-First-Time(R). |
