Product category:
Intellectual Property Cores
News Release from: MIPS Technologies
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 03 July 2001
Thales uses MIPS core for high-security
ASICs
Thales Communications has taken a license from MIPS Technologies for the 32bit MIPS32 4Km processor core for low-power, high-performance security access devices.
Thales Communications (formerly Thomson-CSF Communications) has taken a license from MIPS Technologies for the 32bit MIPS32 4Km processor core for low-power, high-performance security access devices Thales Communications, one of the world's leading suppliers of electronics for defence and professional applications in information and communications systems, will be using the core in ASICs for security applications
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 23 Feb 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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"We benchmarked cores from most of the leading suppliers of embedded processor cores", said Bernard Candaele, ASIC and EDA department manager at Thales Communications.
"The 4Km core evaluation results fulfilled our needs for a high-performance core to run the security algorithms.
Normally, a coprocessor core would be required as well as a core to process the intensive calculations that the algorithms require, but this 32bit core is powerful enough on its own.
No coprocessor means that the ASIC is smaller, less expensive to make and runs on less power.
Low power consumption is a clear advantage of the MIPS core.
The other critical factor was that the MIPS architecture is configurable.
We can select our own parameters to enhance the performance for this security application, while still being compliant with the MIPS architecture specifications.
Because of the security aspects of the application, we can keep these enhancements totally in-house without affecting our ability to use the vast wealth of third party tools that are available for working with the MIPS architecture such as compilers and debuggers".
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