Last month StarCore announced that it is offering two DSP cores for license. StarCore, originally formed in 1999 as a joint design center for Agere and Motorola, introduced the SC140 DSP core in 2000. The SC140 has since been used in chips from Motorola, but has not been available for license by other companies. Last year, StarCore made major changes to its business model (see DSP Insider, July 2002), and announced its intention to begin licensing DSP cores.
StarCore is now licensing a synthesizable version of the quad-MAC SC140 called the SC1400 and a dual-MAC variant called the SC1200. Both are 16-bit fixed-point processors, and the two use the same instruction set. Both can be licensed as standalone cores or embedded within “platforms” that incorporate various supported IP blocks.
The SC1400 is intended for a range of telecom applications, including 3G wireless and network infrastructure; it also targets multimedia and portable applications. The scaled-down SC1200 targets applications that demand moderate performance and require lower cost or lower power consumption, such as 2G and 2.5G handsets. The SC1200 and SC1400 are expected to achieve worst-case clock speeds of 340 MHz and 305 MHz, respectively, in a 0.13-micron TSMC process.
BDTI recently completed an in-depth analysis of the two cores (available in BDTI’s report, Inside the StarCore SC1200 and SC1400; see details of the report below). This analysis shows that the SC1200 and SC1400 have BDTIsimMark2000™ scores of 2690 at 340 MHz and 3420 at 305 MHz, respectively. These scores are higher than any other score BDTI has published for a licensable core to date. The previous highest score for a licensable core is 2570 for the LSI Logic ZSP500 at 325 MHz. (See http://www.BDTI.com/Resources/BenchmarkResults/BDTImark2000 for more information.) It’s clear that although the StarCore architecture is now about four years old, it enters the market in a highly competitive position. In fact, the maturity of the architecture—and its proven track record in chips from Motorola—is a key advantage.
The new cores are likely to face competition not just from other licensable cores, but also from off-the-shelf chips from big-name DSP chip vendors like ADI and TI. The SC1400 and SC1200 are not nearly as fast as the fastest chips from these vendors. However, BDTI’s analysis shows that the StarCore cores have advantages in other key areas, such as energy efficiency, memory efficiency, and ease of programming.
At 100 employees, StarCore is one of the largest vendors of licensable cores, at least in terms of head count. This may prove reassuring to potential licensees who have grown wary of the longevity of core vendors, having watched several (BOPS, Lexra, and Siroyan, for example) go belly-up over the last year. Prospective customers whose products compete with those of the StarCore partners—Motorola, Agere, and Infineon—may wonder, however, just how independent StarCore LLC really is. Whether or not StarCore succeeds may depend to a great extent on its ability to win over customers by presenting an attractive technology road map and consistently meeting its commitments.
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