中国设计！业内首创“和谐统调”架构Android处理器

刚成立两年的半导体设计公司——深圳中微电科技有限公司，在香港上市控股公司的支持下，推出了自己的多核处理器架构，准备开发Android移动计算市场。 和谐统调，ARM中的APU 该公司宣称，其和谐统调处理器(Harmony Unified Processor)架构是业内首创，把两种不同类型的处理器，中央处理器(CPU)和图像处理器(GPU)，统一在一个核芯内。同时结合了多线程虚拟管线。 深圳中微电科技有限公司是最近更名的中国微电子科技集团有限公司的子公司。该公司已收到首批具备和谐统调处理器技术的65纳米硅片，来自其代工供应商。该公司计划2012年推出样品并开始批量生产。 英特尔等公司的ARM和x86已得到广泛支持，任何推出与其竞争的新颖指令集架构的举动都可能引来众人怀疑的目光。商业方面的阻力可能和技术方面一样大。但是，中微电科技有限公司声称，从一张白纸开始并专注于移动设备的需求，与原有架构相比，其架构更具成本效益及低功耗优势。该公司还表示，随着Android的出现，新架构进入市场的障碍比以前更低。 强大的R&D阵容 该公司的高管表示，其可能至少具有成功的机会。首席技术官Simon Moy具有20年的从业经验，曾在英伟达担任过多年的首席工程师，参与了几代GPU的顶点着色器和流处理器的硬件设计。在加入英伟达以前，Moy曾就职于Silicon Graphics、IBM和LSI Logic。 首席科学家Fred Chow在编译器方面具有30年的经验，一直在MIPS担任首席工程师、在Silicon Graphics担任首席科学家并在PathScale Inc.担任编译器工程总监。 中国微电子首席技术官Simon Moy在声明中表示：“本集团较其它中国科技公司具明显优势之处，就是由零开始建立自身的知识产权。这样使我们可以在多方面进行创新，并把握最新半导体发展趋势，令系统级芯片(SoC)生产成本远低于其它芯片制造商。我们为能够建立起这样一队由一班来自硅谷的专才和中国顶尖工程师组成的世界一流技术研发团队伍而骄傲。我们深信，中国微电子这项革命性的高科技产品会深受市场欢迎，并为股东创造更大价值。” 本文授权编译自EE Times，版权所有，谢绝转载 参考英文原文：China startup rolls 'unified' Android processor,by Peter Clarke

相关阅读：
• Google可能在ARM芯片组上对Android标准化
• 英特尔改写Atom路线图，移动领域全力抗衡ARM
• ARM为多核SoC 开发提供优化的调试和追踪解决方案kBaesmc

{pagination} China startup rolls 'unified' Android processor Peter Clarke ICube Corp., a two-year old fabless startup out of Shenzhen, China, backed by a publicly listed holding company in Hong Kong, is going after the Android mobile computing market using its own architecture of multicore processor. The company claims its Harmony Unified Processor architecture is the first ever developed to handle both logic and graphics processing in a single core and in each of multiple processing pipelines. ICube Corp., now a subsidiary of the recently renamed ICube Technology Holdings Ltd., has received 65-nm silicon of the first instantiation of Harmony, the dual-core IC1, back from its foundry supplier. The company is aiming at a 2012 roll out of samples and volume production. Any attempt to introduce a novel instruction set architecture to compete against the broadly-supported ARM, x86 from Intel and others, is likely to be treated with skepticism by many. Objections are likely to be on commercial as much as on technical grounds. However, ICube claims that starting with a blank sheet of paper and specifically targeting the needs of mobile devices, has given it power-efficiency and cost-efficiency advantages over the established architectures. It also claims that with the advent of Android the barriers to entry for a new architecture are much lower than they once were. The executive credentials of the company suggest that it could at least have a chance of success. Chief technology officer Simon Moy has 20 years' experience having spent several years as a principal engineer with Nvidia Corp. where he worked on the hardware design of the vertex shaders and stream processors in several generations of GPUs. Prior to that Moy worked at Silicon Graphics, IBM and LSI Logic. Chief scientist Fred Chow's expertise is on the compiler side where he has 30 years experience, having worked as principal engineer at MIPS, chief scientist at Silicon Graphics and director of compiler engineering at PathScale Inc. "Developing our own intellectual property from the ground up has been a key differentiation of ICube from other technology companies in China," said Moy, in a statement. "This provides us with much greater areas for innovation, enables us to leverage the latest semiconductor trends and lowers the cost of our system-on-a-chip products relative to other chipmakers. We are also proud to have attracted and built a world-class development team composed of by Silicon Valley veterans and top engineering talents in China. We are confident that our revolutionary high technology product will be well received by the market and create value to our shareholders."