"Microprocessors are one of the cornerstones of our company," said Nick Kucharewski, vice president of the microprocessor division at IDT (Santa Clara, Calif.). About 14 percent of the company's total revenue comes from CPUs, up from some 10 percent a few years ago. "The X86 products were definitely not synergistic with our other activities, but embedded processors very clearly fit in," Kucharewski said.

IDT had been struggling for a few years to gain a toehold in the highly competitive PC processor market, but never managed to deliver a product that scored in the price/performance arena. The company announced last year that it was seeking partners, and last month decided to put the entire X86 processor division, Centaur Technology, on the block.

"The WinChip was almost a detour for IDT. This is the core part of their business," noted Tom Halfhill, embedded-processor analyst for Cahners Microdesign Resources (Sunnyvale, Calif.). "They are a significant player in the embedded marketplace, and they have always had a strong focus on communication."

IDT's latest rollouts are part of its RISController line, a pair of 64-bit chips that are enhanced versions of its RC5000 devices. The RC64574 and the RC64575 are pin-compatible with chips using IDT's RISCore 4000 architecture, and bus-compatible with chips in the RC5000 family. IDT uses a single software platform for all of its 64-bit MPUs.

"It is extremely easy for our customers to adopt our chips because they don't have to create a new design," said Philip Bourekas, director of marketing and applications engineering for IDT's processor unit. "They can use these new chips to either upgrade one of their existing systems or create a more powerful version, but they don't have to incur any new development costs."

Bourekas said the initial applications for the processors will likely be in communications markets, although some low-end consumer products with communications uses may also feature the new IDT products. Many of the company's current customers are expected to implement the chips, and Bourekas said IDT has already signed some sales contracts.

The two new products come in speeds ranging from 200 MHz to 333 MHz, and deliver up to 440 Mips. They feature a larger 32-kbyte cache than the RC5000 chips, utilize cache locking and offer digital signal processing capabilities. The company claims the 333-MHz version is the industry's fastest 64-bit MPU. The RC64574 has a 32-bit external bus, and the RC64575 offers a 64-bit external bus.

Both chips are sampling now, with production expected to ramp next quarter. In 10,000-unit volumes, the RC64574 is priced at $23 to $58, while the RC64575 is listed at $55 to $88, depending on speed grade.