Alchemy (processor)
Alchemy is a family of ultra low power
History
Alchemy Semiconductor was a fabless semiconductor company based in Austin, Texas. Founded in 1999 with a seed investment by Cadence Design Systems it licensed the 32-bit MIPS architecture to design, develop, and market high performance, ultra low power SoCs for the Internet Edge Device market. Peripherals were licensed from third parties. The founding team included former members of DEC's Austin Research and Design Center working on the StrongARM project, dissolved after DEC sold its microprocessors business to Intel. In May 2000 Alchemy Semiconductor became an independent company.[1]
Alchemy Semiconductor unveiled the first member of the family, the Au1000 processor, at the Embedded Processor Forum in San Jose, CA, on June 13, 2000,[2][3] with limited customer sampling in February 2001 and availability in production quantities in Q2 of that year, followed in 2001 and 2002 by the Au1500 and Au1100.
In February 2002
Au1 CPU core
The Au1 CPU core designed by Alchemy implements the MIPS32 ISA Release 1 and supports the MIPS EJTAG interface. A floating-point unit is not present, FP instructions generate an exception and can be emulated by software. Code compression (MIPS16) and the optional Supervisor Mode were also omitted. Virtual address translation is TLB-based and relies on a fast exception handler rather than a hardware table walker. The core supports eight interrupt sources with prioritization by software. It has two low power modes where the clocks to all core units are stopped, one mode exempting the data cache to maintain cache coherency with the rest of the system.
Au1 is a scalar, in-order microarchitecture with a classic five stage RISC pipeline enhanced by several optimizations. It includes a 16 KiB, 4-way set associative instruction cache, a 16 KiB, 4-way, write-back, read-allocate data cache, a register file, a write buffer, and a 16/32-bit multiply-accumulate unit and 1 bit/cycle hardware divider. The cache supports prefetching by software, locking of cache lines, and a streaming mode. All pipeline stages complete in one cycle when data is available, and all pipeline hazards and dependencies are enforced by hardware interlocks. A few instructions require multiple cycles.[3][6][7]
Alchemy SoC
The Au1000 SoC is rated for core frequencies up to 500 MHz. At 400 MHz it operates at 1.5 V and the chip consumes no more than 500 mW, with a performance of over 900 Dhrystone-2.1 MIPS/Watt according to Alchemy Semiconductor. Au1000 and Au1500 processors were fabricated on a TSMC 180 nm LV logic 1.5V/3.3V 1P6M process, the Au1100 reduced power consumption further with a TSMC 130 nm process.[6][8] Manufacturing details of later models were not disclosed.
The CPU core, the integrated memory controllers and peripherals are linked by an internal 32-bit system bus (SBUS) running at up to one half of the CPU core frequency. Slower non-bus master capable peripherals are attached with an ancillary peripheral bus. The core's data cache snoops the SBUS for coherency with other bus masters, e.g. a DMA engine. Au12xx models integrate a 64-bit side bus (RBUS) for peripherals requiring more bandwidth from the memory controller.[9] Au13xx models have one RBUS per memory channel.[10]
All Alchemy processors integrate a DRAM controller, a static bus controller, an 8-channel DMA controller for data transfers between memory and peripherals, interrupt controllers, timers, and a power management unit. The static bus controller supports SRAM, ROM, NAND/NOR Flash (Au1550), page mode Flash/ROM, PCMCIA/CompactFlash devices, and I/O peripherals such as an external LCD controller, IDE PIO mode up to ≈80 Mbit/s (Au12xx), or ATA-6/UDMA mode 5 (Au13xx). Au1550 and later processors have a more flexible 16-channel descriptor-based DMA controller. The Au1550 integrates a SafeNet Security Engine providing an entropy-based random number generator and accelerating the DES, 3DES, AES, and RC4 encryption algorithms, and the MD5 and SHA-1 hash algorithms.
Au1100 processors integrate an
1.1 and 2.0.Each member of the family was available with different core frequency and hence power ratings, commercial and industrial temperature ranges, in a Pb-free or (earlier models) standard package. A low profile, fine pitch plastic ball grid array (LF-PBGA) package was used for all models, with ball counts from 324 (Au1000) to 537 (Au13xx), pitch 0.65 mm to 1.0 mm, and package size 17 mm × 17 mm × 1.7 mm to 23 mm × 23 mm × 1.5 mm.
Alchemy Processor Family
Series | Launch | Core frequ. (MHz) | TDP (mW) | DRAM | Static Bus | Integrated Peripherals | Datasheet | Notes | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
PCI | LCD | GPE | CIM | MAE | Hardware de/encrypt. | USB host ports | USB device port | Ethernet | SD card | Low speed busses | GPIOs max. | ||||||||||
by Alchemy Semiconductor (2000–2002) | |||||||||||||||||||||
Au1000 | 2000-06-13[2] (announced) 2001-Q2 (available) |
266-500 | 300-900 typ. | 32-bit SDR-133 | 32-bit data/address | - | - | - | - | - | - | 2 × 1.1 | 1.1 | 2 × 10/100 | - | UART |
32 | [7][11] | |||
Au1500 | 2001-06-11[12] (announced) 2001-12 (available) |
333-500 | 400-1200 typ. | 2.2, 32 bit, 33/66 MHz | - | - | - | - | - | 2 × 1.1 | 1.1 | 2 × 10/100 | - | AC'97, 2 × UART | 39 | [13][14] | |||||
Au1100 | 2002-04-08[15] (announced) | 333-500 | 200-400 typ. | 32-bit SDR-133 2.5V/3.3V | - | v1 | - | - | - | - | 2 × 1.1 | 1.1 | 1 × 10/100 | 2 × 1.1 | AC'97, I²S, IrDA, 2 × SSI, 3 × UART | 48 | [16][17] | ||||
by AMD (2002–2006)
| |||||||||||||||||||||
Au1550 | 2004-02-24[18] (announced) | 333-500 | 400-600 typ., 1460 max. | 16/32-bit SDR-166/ DDR-400 |
32-bit data, 29-bit addr. | 2.2, 32 bit, 33/66 MHz | - | - | - | - | Security Engine | 2 × 1.1 | 1.1 OTG | 2 × 10/100 | 2 × 1.1 | 4 × PSC,[a] 3 × UART | 43 | [19] | |||
Au1200 | 2005-01-03[20] | 333-500 | 1600 max. | 16/32-bit DDR-400/ DDR2-533 |
16-bit data, 15/30-bit addr.[b] |
- | v2 | - | v1 | v1 | AES-128 | 1 × 2.0 | 2.0 OTG | - | 2 × 1.1 | 4 × PSC,[a] 2 × UART | 48 | [21] | |||
by RMI (2006–2009), NetLogic (2009–2011), Broadcom (2011–current) | |||||||||||||||||||||
Au1210 | 2007-01-09 (announced) 2007-06 (available) |
333-400 | 360-420 typ., 1000 max. | 16/32-bit DDR-400/ DDR2-533 |
16-bit data, 15/30-bit addr.[b] |
- | v2 | - | v1 | v1 | - | 1 × 2.0 | 2.0 OTG | - | 2 × 1.1 | 4 × PSC,[a] 2 × UART | 48 | [22] | |||
Au1250 | 400-700[22][23] | 560-580 typ., 1400 max. | AES-128 | 1 × 2.0 | 2.0 OTG | - | 2 × 1.1 | [c] | |||||||||||||
Au1310 | 2009-01[24] (announced) | 533 | 2 × 16-bit DDR2-667 | 16-bit data, 15/30-bit addr.[b] |
- | v2? | - | v2 | v2 | - | 1 × 2.0 | 2.0 OTG | - | 3 × ?, one port supporting 8-bit eMMC 4.3 | 4 × PSC,[a] 4 × UART | 75 | [10] | ||||
Au1320 | 667 | ✓ | ? | ||||||||||||||||||
Au1340 | 533-667 | - | - | ||||||||||||||||||
Au1350/Au1354 | 533-800 | ✓ | AES-128 | ||||||||||||||||||
Au1370/Au1374 | 667-800 | - | - | ||||||||||||||||||
Au1380/Au1384 | 667-1000 | ✓ | AES-128 |
Applications
Alchemy processors were marketed for wireless gateways and access points; VoIP, navigation, and NAS devices; STBs, thin clients, portable and automotive TV and media players, and digital photo frames.
Examples are the Sun Ray 2 family of thin clients., Several Cowon PMP devices, Dell DRAC5 remote administration cards, AirPort Extreme Base Station, embedded products for networking by Sun Microsystems; 4G Systems MTX-1 AccessCube MeshCube
References
- ^ "About Alchemy Semiconductor". Archived from the original on 2014-11-07.
- ^ a b "Alchemy Semiconductor unveils Au1000 Internet Edge processor" (Press release). Embedded Processor Forum, San Jose, CA: Alchemy Semiconductor. 2000-06-13. Archived from the original on 2001-03-09.
- ^ a b Hoeppner, Greg (2000-06-13). Au1000 Internet Edge Processor - A High Performance / Low Power MIPS SOC. Embedded Processor Forum 2000. Alchemy Semiconductor. Archived from the original on 2000-09-18.
- ^ "NetLogic Microsystems Announces Stockholder Approval Required for Acquisition of RMI Corporation" (Press release). NetLogic Microsystems. 2009-10-23. Archived from the original on 2010-03-30.
- ^ "Chipmaker Broadcom to buy NetLogic for $3.7 billion". Reuters. 2016-09-12. Retrieved 2017-01-04.
- ^ a b Plummer, Suzanne (2000-08-13). The Au1000™ Internet Edge Processor: A High Performance, Low Power SOC. Hot Chips 12.
- ^ AMD. September 2005. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2006-10-15. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
- ^ Bassett, Paul (2002-08-19). Alchemy Au1x00. Hot Chips 14.
- AMD. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2005-12-23. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
- ^ a b Product Brief: RMI Alchemy™ Au1300™ Media Processor Series (PDF). RMI. December 2008.
- ^ AMD Alchemy™ Au1000™ Processor Specification Update (PDF). June 2005.
- ^ "Alchemy Semiconductor Expands Low Power, High Performance Chip Portfolio With Advent of Alchemy Au1500" (Press release). Embedded Processor Forum, San Jose, CA: Alchemy Semiconductor. 2001-06-11. Archived from the original on 2001-12-16.
- AMD. March 2006. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2006-10-15. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
- ^ AMD Alchemy™ Au1500™ Processor Specification Update (PDF). June 2005.
- AMD. 2002-04-08. Archived from the originalon 2006-10-20.
- AMD. April 2006. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2006-10-20. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
- ^ AMD Alchemy™ Au1100™ Processor Specification Update (PDF). June 2005.
- AMD. 2004-02-24. Archived from the originalon 2006-05-28.
- AMD. May 2006. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2006-07-08. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
- AMD. 2005-01-03. Archived from the originalon 2006-03-15.
- AMD. February 2006. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2006-10-15. Retrieved 2022-04-27.
- ^ a b RMI Alchemy™ Au1210™ Navigation Processor and Au1250™ Media Processor Data Book (PDF). RMI. April 2007.
- ^ "NetLogic Microsystems Low-Power Embedded Processors Solution and Product Selection Guide". NetLogic Microsystems. Archived from the original on 2010-12-13.
- ^ "RMI Launches Alchemy Au1300 Processor Line" (Press release). 2009-01-13.
External links
- Alchemy Semiconductor website at the Wayback Machine (archived 2000-08-16)
- AMD Alchemy™ Solutions Processor Family at the Wayback Machine (archived 2006-02-03)
- Raza Microelectronics website at the Wayback Machine (archived 2006-07-10)
- RMI Corp. website at the Wayback Machine (archived 2008-02-10)
- Alchemy on the NetLogic website at the Wayback Machine (archived 2010-12-14)
- Alchemy Archived 2009-03-03 at the Wayback Machine page at linux-mips.org