Expanding on the StrongARM stuff: DEC's StrongARM was designed in '94. It shipped about '96. It was a neat chip back then. It was vintage by 2000 (5th year of production). Not even an SDRAM controller! (which didn't exist back when it was designed) (Now we diverge from fact to my opinions on WHY things happened) Intel makes commercial and industrial-grade chips on INTEL fabrication lines. When DEC went under and was split up, Intel nabbed the StrongARM division because it included a license to modify the ARM design. (Compaq bought the ALPHA chip, can't remember who bought the rest) Intel wanted to diversify from the desktop market (which was slowing down) to the emerging handheld market (a very smart move) Intel continued to produce StrongARM but it had 2 limitations: - it could not be built to industrial temp specs - it couldn't be built on an Intel fab line and was stuck on an DEC fab line that Intel didn't want to support. (or even own) So, the x-scale team was given a clean-sheet of paper with these requirements: - Intel fab process (which implies industrial temperatures) - fast - low-power - runs StrongARM code un-modified and so the xscale processor was born. It is "compatible" with a StrongARM in the same way that an ATHLON CPU is compatible with a Pentium. This is NOT a re-named StrongARM by any stretch. We all know that the StrongARM's days are limited. The requirement of being SW compatible for xscale was to bump of StrongARM sooner. I don't know what's happening to the DEC fab. Watch for it on e-bay some day soon! :) I'm sure there are many people with more detail on the evolution than this. Please fill in the gaps! Brian PS: And if anyone's designing around StrongARM still, can I interest you in a steam-engine factory at a great price? Bryan Hurley wrote: > > It is a cache issue or something, > > here is an article on the issue > http://www.silicon.com/news/500018/1/1034131.html > > but of course this is probably due to running strongarm software on the > new processor.. which is of course just the new version of the strongarm > after intel bought it and renamed it. > > ARM existed > DEC had StrongARM > Intel used some of the IP without permission > DEC sued Intel > Intel ended up buying the StrongARM IP > Intel renames to X-Scale after working on it. > > DEC bought by Compaq > Compaq bought by HP > > fun stuff.. > Bryan > > On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, Doug wrote: > > > Can you elaborate? I am considering playing with X-Scale. > > Aren't they IN products already like iPAQ and others? > > What are the bugs? Where can I read about that? > > > > Thanks, > > Doug > -- Subscription/unsubscription/info requests: send e-mail with subject of "subscribe", "unsubscribe", or "info" toWear-Hard Mailing List Archive (searchable): http://wearables.blu.org Please, *PLEASE* don't subscribe through a forward/expander/false domain
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