NEC Electronics Inc. Announces Design Wins for the VR4300 Microprocessor; Chip In QMS Laser Printer, RISQ Modular Systems Internetworking Board.MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 11, 1996--NEC Electronics Inc. today announced two new design wins for its VR4300 MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) The execution speed of a computer. For example, .5 MIPS is 500,000 instructions per second; 100 MIPS is a hundred million instructions per second. RISC RISCin full Reduced Instruction Set Computing Computer architecture that uses a limited number of instructions. RISC became popular in microprocessors in the 1980s. microprocessor. The VR4300 is specially optimized for powering a new class of embedded systems Embedded systems Computer systems that cannot be programmed by the user because they are preprogrammed for a specific task and are buried within the equipment they serve. such as a new printer system from QMS (1) (Minolta-QMS, Inc., Mobile, AL) A manufacturer of laser printers founded in 1977 by Jim Busby. Initially involved with controllers for printing bar codes and labels, it entered the laser printer business in the mid-1980s and set numerous records. and an internetworking board from RISQ RISQ Réseau d'Informations Scientifiques du Québec (Canada) RISQ Reseau Interordinateurs Scientifique Quebecois (French: Quebec Scientific Internet Network) RISQ Review of International Social Questions Modular Systems. The QMS 2425 is the first laser printer in its industry to migrate from 32- to 64-bit architecture. RISQ Modular's I-Net/43PRO features 64-bit RISC performance at a notably low power consumption for its class of products. "These design wins indicate that the MIPS RISC architecture is a favorable alternative for high-performance, cost-sensitive embedded applications," said Ray Newstead, VR-Series product marketing manager for NEC (NEC Corporation, Tokyo, www.nec.com, www.necus.com) An electronics conglomerate known in the U.S. for its monitors. In Japan, it had the lion's share of the PC market until the late 1990s (see PC 98). NEC was founded in Tokyo in 1899 as Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. Electronics Inc. "Because of our advanced 0.35-micron process technology, we can offer 64-bit performance at a price that is less than most 32-bit processors." As the first provider of a laser printer based on an R4300 MIPS RISC processor RISC processor [Reduced Instruction Set Computer], computer arithmetic-logic unit that uses a minimal instruction set, emphasizing the instructions used most often and optimizing them for the fastest possible execution. , QMS is pioneering the migration of such systems to 64-bit architectures. The support for double-precision floating-point operations and the five-stage pipeline and 64-bit architecture of the VR4300 allows QMS to deliver high quality and high-speed data movement, resulting in a 24-page-per-minute print system. As a result, the VR4300 enables the QMS 2425 to deliver greater overall throughput and higher performance than is currently available in its price class of printers. The VR4300 features 100-MHz, 3.3-volt operation that has enabled RISQ Modular Systems to offer an immediate solution for internetworking applications which require high performance, low power consumption and low cost. Features of the VR4300 equip designers, such as RISQ Modular Systems, with Intel Pentium-class performance for a fraction of the price. Features and Benefits of the VR4300 NEC's VR4300 is a 64-bit processor with 64-bit registers, data paths and buffers to ensure high-speed data movement within the chip. The 64-bit paths are particularly important for operations such as bit-stream decoding and matrix manipulation, which are requirements for video and graphics processing. Furthering its real-time interactive capabilities, the VR4300 processor features an improved arithmetic logic unit See ALU. (ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) The high-speed CPU circuit that does calculating and comparing. Numbers are transferred from memory into the ALU for calculation, and the results are sent back into memory. Alphanumeric data are sent from memory into the ALU for comparing. ) with faster multiply functions that are central to media manipulation and data compression/decompression. It also supports double-precision floating-point operations. The VR4300 has a high-performance memory management unit (MMU (Memory Management Unit) The part of the computer that governs memory access. Either part of the CPU chip or housed on separate chips, the MMU controls memory partitions and virtual memory. See memory and virtual memory. MMU - Memory Management Unit ) with a 32 double-entry translation lookaside buffer A Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB) is a CPU cache that is used by memory management hardware to improve the speed of virtual address translation. A TLB has a fixed number of slots containing page table entries, which map virtual addresses onto physical addresses. (TLB TLB - Translation Look-aside Buffer ) to enable full functionality of future complex media library software for advanced interactive environments. Large on-chip caches (16 kilobytes instruction and 8 kilobytes data) provide higher performance for interactive applications by reducing the need for frequent memory access. Performance The VR4300 operates at 133 MHz (MegaHertZ) One million cycles per second. It is used to measure the transmission speed of electronic devices, including channels, buses and the computer's internal clock. A one-megahertz clock (1 MHz) means some number of bits (16, 32, 64, etc. with an integer performance of 80 SPECint92 and 60 SPECfp92 and 170 Dhrystone MIPS, but its true measure of performance is its superior ability to run media applications with true interactivity, such as the latest video games. The 100-MHz version of the VR4300 is currently available and the 150-MHz version is planned for Q2 '96. NEC's VR Series NEC licenses MIPS RISC technology from MIPS Technologies. Using this technology, NEC manufactures the VR-Series line of high-performance microprocessors. The company offers a broad line of MIPS-based microprocessors including the VR4100, VR4300, VR5000 and VR10000 64-bit RISC offerings. About NEC Electronics NEC Electronics Inc., headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., manufactures and markets an extensive line of electronic products including ASICs, microprocessors and microcontrollers, digital signal processors (DSPs), memories and components, including flat panel displays. In 1995, the company ranked fourth in semiconductor sales in the United States(1). The company operates a 676,000-square-foot manufacturing facility in Roseville, Calif. NEC Electronics Inc. is an affiliate of NEC Corporation (NIPNY), a $43 billion international manufacturer of computer, communications and semiconductor products. -0- Note to Editors: NEC, VR-Series, VR4100, VR4300, VR5000, VR10000 are registered trademarks or trademarks of NEC Corp. MIPS is a registered trademark of MIPS Technologies Inc. QMS is a registered trademark of QMS Inc. Intel, Pentium are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. (1) -- According to Dataquest (Jan. 1996) CONTACTS: Cohn & Wolfe (for NEC) Vanessa Gonzales, 415/965-6187 vanessa_gonzales@yr.com or RISQ Modular Systems Nageen Sharma, 510/490-0732 or A&R Partners Robson Grieve, 415/363-0982 robson_grieve@arpartners.com or NEC Electronics Inc. Literature Hotline, 800/366-9782 |
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