Nextchip selects Cortus APS5 for automotive and security apps

GERMANY: Cortus, a technology leader in cost effective, silicon efficient, 32-bit processor IP, and multimedia fabless semiconductor company Nextchip, announced that Nextchip has licensed APS5 and other Cortus processor cores. The cores are intended for use in security and automotive applications.

Cortus S.A. licenses a range of 32-bit processor cores for embedded systems. The cores provide licensees with a scalable choice in embedded computational performance and silicon area to meet a wide variety of application needs.

“The Cortus APS5 processor core, caches and associated peripheral IP provides key building blocks for our future video processing designs” says Kyoungsoo Kim, CEO and president of Nextchip, “The combination of good processing power and low silicon area is just right for our designs”. He adds, “With a range of compatible processor cores, Cortus provides us with the options we need for future projects”.

“Nextchip is well known for its innovative products based on their core expertise in video processing”, says Michael Chapman, CEO and president of Cortus, “We are very pleased that they have licensed a variety of processor and peripheral products from Cortus”.

The Cortus family of APS processors starts with the world’s smallest 32-bit core, the APS1, and goes up to the high performance APS5 and 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.