Microcontroller Includes Rambus Interface

"When this chip is released, it will truly revolutionize the industry and provide the next generation of performance against which all other micro devices will be measured." That's how NEC's new microcontroller is described by George Wang, general manager for the microcontroller and peripheral business unit at NEC Electronics Inc., Santa Clara, Calif. He calls it the first 32-bit microcontroller with a Rambus interface. "NEC sees the development of this Rambus-equipped microcontroller as fundamental to furthering the progress of the multimedia age," he adds. It operates at 200 MHz and will be based on the company's fastest process technology (0.25 micron). Highly integrated with multimedia peripherals, the superscalar RISC microcontroller is intended to handle multimedia applications for real-time, high-speed, 3-D-rendered video graphics; digital video discs; speech recognition; speech synthesis, sound, and music; and high bandwidth Internet communications.