EnSilica declares ‘open season’ on 8051 MCU
Colin Holland
7/29/2010 8:54 AM EDT
EnSilica has established a special licensing deal to encourage existing 8051 licensees to switch their next ASIC design start to an eSi-1600 16-bit soft processor core.
For all enquiries received before January 31, 2011 and subject to terms and conditions, EnSilica is offering to match their 8051 license fee.
“We have declared ‘open season’ on the 8051,” said David Wheeler, Technical Director of EnSilica. “Where a small and relatively inexpensive processor is required, the 8051 is probably still the most popular choice. However, the eSi-1600 offers considerable additional benefits over even the most optimized 8051, particularly in terms of low power and silicon area which are so important in today’s competitive marketplace. What’s more, the eSi-1600 soft processor core delivers these additional benefits at a very competitive price.”
EnSilica’s eSi-1600 provides 65 times the performance of the original 8051 (Dhrystone DMIPs/MHz) and more than 5 times the performance of the fastest, enhanced 8051.
This allows the clock to be disabled for 80 percent of the time relative to an 8051, delivering power savings.
Comparing the Dhrystone kernel size, the eSi-1600’s mixed 16/32-bit instruction set occupies only 60% of the code size required by the 8051, providing substantial savings in silicon area and power associated with the program memory.
The eSi-1600’s core size is 8.5k gates.
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4205036/EnSilica-declares–open-season–on-8051-MCU
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