SAN JOSE, Calif. – Embedded Processor Forum – June 13, 2000 – Building on its Internet audio leadership, Cirrus Logic Inc. (NASDAQ:CRUS) today announced the Maverick™ EP9312. This highly optimized, market-specific processor (MSP) opens the market for home audio jukeboxes and servers, delivering the performance, flexibility, security, and time-to-market features required by designers. The Maverick EP9312 system-on-chip combines the powerful new 200 MHz ARM920T processor core, Cirrus Logic’s new MaverickCrunch™ math co-processor, patent-pending MaverickLock™ security technology, and a broad range of peripheral devices for product design flexibility. Technically, the EP9312 integrates:
“With this advanced capability and a broad depth of support from software tools vendors, we are providing the right feature set and the right price point to enable a new generation of Internet audio devices,” said Matthew Perry, vice president and general manager of Cirrus Logic’s Embedded Processors Division.
According to Greg North, vice president of engineering for the Embedded Processor division: “We created an ideal engine to process audio algorithms by combining floating and fixed-point architectures in our MaverickCrunch coprocessor. The innovative 32b x 32b MAC with 72-bit accumulation preserves full precision throughout intermediate filter loop calculations, thereby eliminating the cascading effects of quantization errors.”
MaverickCrunch
The MaverickCrunch engine is a math coprocessor designed to be a balance of floating point, integer and signal processing instructions optimized for audio algorithms while maintaining compatibility to the ARM9 coprocessor interface. The computational unit’s floating point section is IEEE-754 compatible, accelerating single and double precision floating point operations. The integer section supports 32 and 64 bit operations. The EP9312 also includes a single cycle 32 x 32-bit multiply-accumulate (MAC) unit with the results going into one of four 72-bit accumulators. Additionally, hardware assists were included in the design for conversion from integer to floating point and vice versa.
The MaverickCrunch coprocessor is easy to program due to its shared memory interface and instruction stream with the ARM920T. In addition, hardware forwarding and interlock allows the programmer to use MaverickCrunch without concern of the pipeline. These features allow the EP9312 to be programmed easily using standard high level languages such as C or C++.
MaverickLock
MaverickLock Security provides for secure downloading and digital rights management, key features that could help alleviate many of the concerns that artists and music companies have about piracy and payment. The design enables hardware-based content security and allows multiple security vendors to co-exist on the same system. MaverickLock’s unique emulation technology allows the processor to create locked cache/MMU entries without internal or external memory. It is fully compliant with the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) and offers industry-grade on-chip security for consumer applications. The design provides a secure hardware environment, using 256 bits of laser fuses for on-chip permanent unique IDs, private keys and passwords.
Software Support
The Maverick EP9312 supports multiple operating systems including Linux, Windows CE and others. Cirrus Logic has partnered with Cygnus to provide a full range of tool support for the Maverick EP9312, and software developers worldwide support the ARM processor architecture. In addition, the most popular Internet audio standards such as MP3, WMA and AAC are supported.
Price and Availability
The new Maverick EP9312 will begin sampling in the fourth quarter with volume shipments expected to begin early next year. The Maverick EP9312 will be priced at $38.50 in quantities of 10,000.
About Cirrus Logic
Cirrus Logic is a premier supplier of high-performance analog and DSP chip solutions for Internet entertainment electronics. Building on its global market share leadership in audio
integrated circuits and its rich mixed-signal patent portfolio, the company targets high-volume audio, storage and communications applications. Cirrus Logic sells its products under the Crystal®, Maverick™and 3Ci™ brands as well as its own name. Founded in 1984 in Silicon Valley, Cirrus Logic operates from headquarters in Austin and major sites located in Fremont, Calif. and Broomfield, Colo. as well as offices in Europe, Japan and Asia.
# # #Safe Harbor Provision
Any forward looking statements and all other statements that may be made in this news release that are not historical facts are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. Please refer to Cirrus Logic’s current Form 10-K and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission for more information on the risk factors that could cause actual results to differ.
Note to editors: Cirrus Logic, Maverick, MaverickLock and MaverickCrunch are registered trademarks of Cirrus Logic Inc. All other product names noted herein may be trademarks of their respective holders.
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