Out in Front: September 12, 1996

The 80296SA is breathing new life into Intel's 196 family. Although Intel's designers did a major rework of the 196's core to create the 296, the 296 still maintains a common architecture, instruction set, and binary compatibility with the 196. The new core not only is pipelined, but also has improved math- and array-handling performance, providing the 296 with five times faster overall instruction execution than the 8xC196KC. The µC has a 40-bit hardware accumulator and can execute a multiply-accumulate in 80 nsec, making the µC suitable for many DSP applications.

The 296's external bus can dynamically switch between multiplexed and demultiplexed operation and can access a 6-Mbyte linear address space. The chip's PLL lets you use an external clock to drive the device at one-half or one-quarter the maximum operating frequency of 40 MHz. The 296 also contains 512 bytes of register RAM and 2 kbytes of data RAM. To further support device compatibility, the 100-pin QFP pinout matches the 8xC196NP and 8xC196NU µCs, and the 296 contains the same peripherals. Peripherals include an event-processor array with 80-nsec resolution, a three-output PWM with a 195.3-kHz maximum frequency, and a serial port with a maximum synchronous baud rate of 12.5 Mbaud. The 80296SA sells for $13.50 (10,000). (See the entry in the microprocessor directory, which starts on pg 45, for more details.)

For tool support, Nohau (Campbell, CA) and Kontron Elektronik (Newport Beach, CA) provide in-circuit emulators, BSO Tasking (Needham, MA) and IAR Systems (San Francisco) offer compilers/assemblers, and Chiptools (Mississauga, ON, Canada) provides a Windows-based debugger and simulator. Intel offers an evaluation board.

—by Markus Levy

Intel Corp, Santa Clara, CA. (800) 628-8686, http://www.intel.com.