NEC Electronics uses Cadence 10/100M Ethernet Solution for SoCLite+

DUESSELDORF, GERMANY …. KAWASAKI, JAPAN … – February 18th, 2004 – — 18 Feb 2004 - On the occasion of the “Embedded World 2004” exhibition in Nuremberg (Germany), NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, the European semiconductor arm of NEC Electronics Corporation, today announced their System-on-Chip Lite+ (SoCLite+) device will use the Cadence 10/100M Ethernet MAC (MACB) solution.

Following the successful launch of their System-on-Gate-Array product family with System-on-Chip Lite (SoCLite) and SoCsmart (System-on-Chip Smart), NEC Electronics is releasing SoCLite+. Being presented at this year’s “Embedded World” exhibition, SoCLite+ is a customizable microcontroller together with a programmable gate-array area enabling customers to make application-specific extensions to the core. The microcontroller subsystem consists of an ARM7TDMI-S™ 32-bit RISC CPU core plus standard peripherals, such as a UART, timer, interrupt-controller and watchdog-timer. In addition, the SoCLite+ microcontroller subsystem features an advanced multi-port memory-controller supporting SDRAM, SRAM, ROM and Flash memory, enabling high data throughput to support peripherals with high memory transfer rates. The complete Cadence solution was comprised of the 10/100M Ethernet MAC (MACB), a key functional block within the SoCLite+ microcontroller and expert support from Cadence Engineering Services for the  integration and verification of their Ethernet solution into SoCLite+.

“During our evaluation process we were most impressed with the functionality and flexibility of the Cadence Ethernet solution.” said Ewald Preiss, senior manager of the Macro Development department at NEC Electronics (Europe), “Our confidence in the Cadence IP was reinforced by the technical ability of the Cadence Engineering Services team and the quality of support which they provided.” 

“One of Cadence’s strengths is our ability to create and integrate silicon IP that helps customers like NEC Electronics develop innovative products like SoCLite+. The MACB Ethernet core is a great example of IP we designed to be highly configurable and easily integrated into SoCs to meet special flexibility requirements such as NEC Electronics’.  An especially critical requirement of such IP is not only that it meet performance specifications, but that it be designed to work well within the tools and flows required for implementation.  We particularly excel in this area.” said Tim Henricks, vice president of Engineering Services at Cadence.

SoCLite+ target applications are primarily in the industrial and low-end telecommunications markets where Ethernet connectivity is rapidly becoming a must due to its low cost and ubiquity.

About NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH

NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH, headquartered in Duesseldorf, Germany, is a leading developer, manufacturer and supplier of semiconductor products in Europe. Committed to meeting customers' cost, performance and time-to-market requirements, the company offers solutions ranging from standard products to system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions, as well as customized products for next-generation designs. NEC Electronics also offers customers the benefit of state-of-the-art manufacturing locally in Europe, besides the global production of its parent company, NEC Electronics Corporation. Additionally, NEC Electronics (Europe) GmbH is the exclusive European sales and marketing channel of LCD and PDP modules from NEC LCD Technologies Ltd. For more information visit http://www.ee.nec.de.