Programmable SoCs Use Only 2-3 mA/MHz When Active

Promising to be a major player in the marketplace for SoCs earmarked for use in low-power, high-performance portable products, such as PDAs, GPSs, portable test equipment, and wireless Internet appliances, the AT94K10 field-programmable system-level IC (FPSLIC) dissipates only 2-3 mA/MHz during operation and less than 50 µA in its standby mode from a chip powered by a 20+ MIPS AVR RISC controller with hardware multiplier.
Complementing the controller are 10,000 gates of SRAM-based programmable logic, 36 KB of SRAM, a two-wire serial interface, two UARTs, three timer/counters, and a watchdog timer. The MCU's 127 16-bit, fixed-length instructions are optimized so that 90% of all MCU operations can be handled by a single instruction. The AT94K10 FPSLIC comes in 84-pin PLCC, 100- and 144-pin TQFP, and 208-pin PQFP packages and has a starting price of $9.95 each/250K.