Microsemi Adopts Cortus Processor Core for Industrial Mixed-Signal SoC Platform

Cortus S.A. today announced that its Cortus processor cores have been chosen by Microsemi Corporation for a new mixed signal system-on-chip SoC platform for industrial applications. Cortus processor cores are designed to meet the needs of the emerging wave of smart applications. With their silicon efficiency and good processing power they are particularly suited to smart analog tasks. The small silicon area of the cores means that they have ultra-low power and are well suited for use with mixed signal technologies typically used for modern sensors.

“By combining our 32-bit processor core with Microsemi’s analog and digital signal conditioning the end user will benefit from optimal system performance,” says Michael Chapman, CEO and President of Cortus. He adds, “By handling data processing close to the source Cortus cores add significant value to customer applications by offloading tasks from the host processor and reducing software complexity.”

“The Cortus 32-bit RISC processor core and its associated peripheral IPs provide optimum power performance as an embedded controller for our mixed signal system-on-chip platforms,” said Farshad Zarghami, vice president of Microsemi’s Analog and Mixed Signal group.

The Cortus family of APS processors starts with the world’s smallest 32-bit core, the APS1, and goes up to the floating point FPS6. All cores interface to Cortus’ peripherals including Ethernet 10/100 MAC, USB 2.0 Device and USB 2.0 OTG via the efficient APS bus. They also share the simple vectored interrupt structure which ensures rapid, real time interrupt response, with low software overhead.

The APS toolchain and IDE (for C and C++) is available to licensees free of charge, and which can be customised and branded for final customer use. Ports of various RTOSs are available such as FreeRTOS, Micrium uC/OSII.