14 DAY TRIAL // Technology is ever advancing and, while the changes are most noticeable on the consumer front, where hardware makers always come out in full force with their announcements and technologies, things are progressing just as steadily on other levels as well, as is made obvious by STMicroelectronics, which has just shown off the SPEAr1310, a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 CPU with a DDR3 interface.
The SPEAr1310 is built based on the 55nm HCMOS manufacturing process technology, short for high-speed CMOS.
It not only has the benefits of the strong Cortex A9 cores, but actually integrates a full range of connectivity options, in addition to its normal feature set.
The chip is aimed at embedded applications, which, in itself, means that its level of horsepower need not be monumental, but the company still went ahead and outfitted it with a wide feature set.
One of its most important assets is its DDR3 memory controller, and this fact alone is enough to guarantee a high level of performance.
The other major benefit is its HD display controller with touchscreen capabilities, which basically allows it to handle TFT displays.
The processor also supports a range of connectivity options and other elements, including SATA, USB, PCI Express, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, a security HW accelerator and a JPEG codec accelerator.
Finally, the processor boasts two TDM/E1 HDLC controllers with 256/32 time slots per frame respectively, and 2S, UARTs, SPIand I2C ports.
The 55nm-based SPEAr1310 ARM embedded chip from STMicroelectronics is already sampling.
"SPEAr1310 is the first device in the recently announced SPEAr1300 family and others will follow shortly," said Loris Valenti, General Manager of STMicroelectronics' Computer Systems Division.
"With its innovative architecture and powerful feature set, SPEAr1310 is at the leading edge of the embedded processor market and enables an unprecedented mix of cost competitiveness, performance and flexibility," Valenti added.