Applied SoC Designs

   
  Low-power MCU (Micro-controller Unit) Architecture Platform
   
 
Vision
InMCU has been driving a wide variety of applications, ranging from products of daily life such as toys, phones and PC peripherals, to high-end equipment like Set-top-boxes, routers, etc. Thanks to the improvement in the wafer fabrication process, the manufacturing costs of MCU have been significantly reduced, turning this market into a mature and highly competitive playground.

Nowadays, there are two main challenges for MCU chip makers, namely, manufacturing cost reduction and product time-to-market cycle. Companies generally require high-quality, fast, easy-to-use, but low-cost processor solutions for various electronics applications.
 

Methodology and Solutions
The Low-power MCU Design Platform (LP-MAP-8) project aims to address the above business and technical challenges. In this Design Platform, the CPU, IP blocks, bus architecture and customizable IC design methodology altogether integrate into a turnkey solution for MCU IC.

To small/medium enterprises, this solution is designed to lower their technical entry barrier by turnkey deliverables with competitive cost. It can greatly save engineering resources to set up a new MCU design infrastructure that requires special skills. To existing MCU design companies, LP-MAP-8 provides a consistent and reliable design platform which can ramp up MCU chips turnaround time, and thus shorten the products' time-to-market cycle.

LP-MAP-8 includes an Architectural Chassis, CPU (adaptable to commercial core like RISC, 8051) and Chip - Integration - Module (CIM), together with various MCU supporting modules (like SCI, SPI, I2C, ADC, etc).

 

Applications
Associated with LP-MAP-8, comprehensive design tools set methodology and supporting services will be established for the industry. The LP-MAP-8 platform and associated Intellectual Property (IP) deliverables will be adapted to multinational IC Design IP-sharing databases, and can be scaled out as key components in commercial electronics.