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Innovation and IP in 2009Welcome to a new year, and a whole new set of financial challenges. We hear in the news and from customers daily about the declining economy's big impact on most sectors of the electronics marketplace. Every new project now gets tremendous scrutiny as to its costs and expected rate of return: reasonably viable products that would have moved ahead a year ago now get tabled because their likely pay-off just isn't big enough, or they're judged to be too risky. We're glad to at least be in a position to help with this tough situation. I'm not talking about lower prices—we already try to price CAST products so you get a fair and competitive value—but rather I'm referring to IP's role in helping you innovate. In a computer industry downturn a few years ago, Apple's Steve Jobs was quoted saying "The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament." That seems to have worked pretty well for them. I think good IP can help you do the same. Using good IP from a supportive provider like CAST is like getting help from that smart, connected friend who always comes through for you. Licensing a processor, bus interface, or image compression core instead of building it yourself means that's one less big thing you have to worry about. That frees both time and mental capacity, so you and your team can focus where you matter most: devising the most ingenious new system or product you can, then guiding it through a quick and right-first-time development and manufacturing process. We can show you slides and spreadsheets explaining that for many functions, buying a CAST core will end up being significantly cheaper than building it yourself. But our biggest benefit is ultimately much more important: CAST IP frees you to innovate. Stop by our DesignCon booth this week, or call or email to talk about your needs, and to see how choosing CAST IP can help your next project become a real winner! -- Hal Barbour, president The Fastest 8-bit 8051 CoreWe recently announced the R8051XC2, a new 8051-compatible microcontroller core that's very fast, quite configurable, and great for ASICs or FPGAs. Building on our 8051 experiences going back to 1997, this core uses a smart architectural design to run up to 12.1 times faster than the original 8051 chip. That's the fastest 8-bit 8051 figure we can find in the published literature. It's also very easy to configure with different capabilities and peripherals support, and you can choose from several pre-packaged versions or the fully-configurable version to suit your budgetary and project needs. Read more in the datasheet or news release. SDIO Host and NAND Flash Controller Core NewsWe've seeing a lot of action in our solid state device (SSD) memory controllers family, which includes DDR1 and DDR2 and SDRAM/SDR mobile cores. This week at DesginCon we're announcing two improved cores in this family:
Be sure to check these out if you need SSD memory controllers for your next ASIC or FPGA design; let us know if you have any questions. Get in touchGive us a call (+1-201-391-8300) or email if you'd like to comment on anything in this issue, or just to learn more about how our line of over 100 cores can work for you. |
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DesignCon 2009
Organized by GSA IP Chair Bill Martin, this panel includes our own Bill Finch and other experienced pros
Current CAST Customers: check in at our DesignCon booth, and we'll send you a |
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here. Copyright © 2009, CAST, Inc. CAST is a trademark
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