Alchemy Shows off MIPS-based Processor at DevCon

Fabless semiconductor company Alchemy just let us know about its new low-power Au1500 microprocessor, which it's prancing around at the Microsoft Windows Embedded Developers Conference (DevCon) in Las Vegas this week. The MIPS32-based Au1500 has an integrated PCI interface, on-chip memory controllers and Internet access peripherals. The performance and typical power scalability ranges from 333 MHz at less than 400 mW, 400 MHz at 700 mW to 500 MHz at 1.2W. Alchemy says the chip is targeted at communications client devices and networking applications. It uses a 66 MHz PCI 2.2 controller and is optimized for thin client devices, gateways, and network-oriented embedded and streaming media apps. The Au1500 runs operating systems including Windows CE, Linux and VxWorks. The Alchemy Pb1500 development board is also available for system software development and hardware evaluation. Customer sampling of the 400 MHz version will begin in December, 2001. Pricing for the 333 MHz version of the Au1500 is $39, and $43 for the 400 MHz version, both in 10K lots. The Pb1500 development board is priced at $4,000.