GEC PLESSEY HAS THREE ARM-DERIVED COMMUNICATIONS MICROCONTROLLERS

(June 19th 1995) Swindon, Wiltshire-based GEC Plessey Semiconductors
Ltd has announced three 32-bit microcontrollers designed for high
performance communications. General Electric Co Plc has designed the
Butterfly, Spider and Mantis microcontrollers around Advanced Risc
Machines Ltd's ARM7 RISC core.

The Butterfly is an entry-level product for cellular phones, data
adaptors and low-end personal communicators, and features two UARTs,
a two-channel direct memory access and an 8-bit programmable
peripheral interface designed for fast on-board communications.
The Spider has the same basic design but includes an on-chip V2.1 PC
card slave interface. It has a four-channel direct memory access
controller with programmable source and destination devices, and one
UART. The company sees it being used in asynchronous transfer mode PC
cards.
Mantis features a 16-bit programmable peripheral interface and a
second UART interface. It is aimed at higher-end embedded systems
that require a larger number of input-output ports such as a
controller for bridges and routers.

Butterfly can be clocked at up to 25MHz at 5V, 15MHz at 3V; Spider
and Mantis do 30MHz and 20MHz at the same voltages. Butterfly is
sampling now at $17.50 for 25,000-up; Spider at $23.50 and Mantis at
$32.00 will follow.