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HCL licenses ASIC tech to Samsung

A Staff Writer in Bombay

The technology development division of HCL Corporation, the $600 million Indian information technology transnational, has announced that it has licensed intellectual property rights in the P1394a serial bus standard to Samsung Electronics of Korea, the seventh largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world.

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The first 'application scientific integrated circuit' semiconductors produced by Samsung with HCL's technology were exhibited at the P1394a Trade Association in San Jose, California, last month.

Samsung's is among the first commercially viable P1394a ASICs based on soft cores. Samsung is looking at marketing the semiconductors to other electronics manufacturers globally and incorporating them into their own products.

Worldwide production of P1394a chips is expected to cross 400 million by 2000. Following the license to Samsung, HCL is discussing further licensing arrangements with other leading semiconductor manufacturers worldwide, for the soft cores, the simulation environments and the full functionality together with customisation services.

HCL Corporation Chairman Shiv Nadar has said, "It gives us great pride to yet again create an industry benchmark. This strengthens HCL's foundation of firsts and also places India on the global map of technology design."

Based on the IEEE 1394-1995 standard, the P1394a is the latest international standard for a high speed, low cost serial bus. It supports data transfer at speeds ranging from 100 MBPS to 400 MBPS with future extensions likely to push the speed up to 3200 MBPS.

The P1394a is being increasingly used in digital video cameras, digital video disks, digital TVs, set-top boxes, computers and high-speed peripherals.

HCL's IPRs comprise design modules called soft cores that implement the functionality of the P1394a standard together with an integrated development, simulation, testing and benchmarking environment.

The soft cores enable semiconductor manufacturers to integrate this functionality into their ASICs with a faster time to market.

HCL's soft cores are among the very first silicon-proven designs worldwide for the P1394a2.0 standard.

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