This explaines the PCI Bus Controller. It's part of the MicroSparc chip.....................................
This explaines why C-Cube has one in its microSparc
chip........................
infoworld.com
New Sun processor family may power low-cost Internet appliances
By Torsten Busse
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 1:32 PM PT, Apr 3, 1996
Sun Microelectronics Inc. on Wednesday announced a family of Sparc
processors targeted at a new breed of embedded devices, especially for
telecommunications, intranetworking, and office automation.
Sun expects the processors to show up in network printers, intelligent
routers and hubs, PBX switches, network servers, voice-response systems, as
well as the much-touted low-cost network computers for Web access.
"We see a huge market potential for embedded applications with us
potentially selling millions of processors," said Peter Harverson, European
director of Sun Microelectronics.
The so-called microSparc-IIpe family of microprocessors will allow
developers to reduce the time necessary to develop embedded applications,
Sun executives said.
The new family of chips is compatible with the SPARC V8 architecture, which
is based on code already tested in Sparc workstations and eliminates
cross-compilation of development code, Harverson said.
Running at 100 MHz, the microSparc-IIpe family offers a performance of 125
MIPS and is the first Sparc processor with integrated PCI bus controller.
The microSparc-IIpe offers a data transfer rate of a maximum 192M bytes per
second, Sun officials said.
The chip architecture allows for direct links to dynamic RAMs and EDO DRAMS
and integrates a 32-bit flash memory interface for networked embedded
applications.
Besides running Sun's Solaris operating system, the microSparc-IIpe
processors also support a range of real-time operating systems, including
those made by Lynx Real Time Systems Inc., Chorus Systems, and Wind River
Systems Inc.
In addition, the processors will also run the upcoming embedded version of
Solaris, which is a stripped-down, smaller-footprint version of Sun's Unix
operating system.
SunSoft will announce Embedded Solaris in May, Harverson said. "Our dream is
to get Solaris onto flash [memory], but that's in the future."
"The biggest barrier to time-to-market is software development," said
Harverson. "Any telecommunications company will tell you that more than 70
percent of systems development is spent on software development."
The first sample shipment of the processors is planned for the fourth
quarter, Harverson said.
Besides the embedded processors, Sun will also offers ASIC processors and
boards based on the new chip family and plans to design kits that will allow
developers to reconfigure the processors for specific applications.
In addition, a range of software development tools, debuggers, and compilers
will be available from Sun and third parties, including Wind River and
Microtec Research.
Sun partners Personal Media Corp. and Chorus Systems have announced support
of the new processors, promising to port their respective real-time
operating systems and development tools to the microSparc-IIpe family, Sun
said.
Sun Microelectronics in Mountain View, Calif. can be reached at (408)
774-8114 or at sun.com.
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AViA@TV is availible with or without the MicroSparc chip. Why not do the same with the consumer encoder????????????????????????
c-cube.com
The AViA@tv graphics transport network processor product set includes the AViA-iNX and AViA-eNX. As the name indicates, these devices incorporate all the components that enable an advanced set-top box design - transport stream demultiplexing, advanced graphics processing and acceleration, network enabling controllers for ATM and optionally for 2-way HFC, and an optional embedded 80 - 100MHz CPU. In addition the following features that are central to the design of a set-top are also included: DVB descrambling, 2 Smartcard interfaces, IR receive/transmit interface, IDC data exchange interface, a high speed interface customizable for Firewire (IEEE1394), and parallel port (IEEE1284). The AViA-iNX includes an internal CPU in addition to all the features outlined above. The AViA-eNX is similar to the AViA-iNX in every respect except that it does not have an internal CPU.
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