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SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- LSI Logic Corporation (NYSE: LSI) today announced the second generation of its ZSP(TM) digital signal processor (DSP) architecture at the 2001 Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, California. Building on the highly successful ZSP400 superscalar DSP, the new second generation (G2) architecture offers greatly increased processing performance, reduced power consumption, and an enhanced feature set and instruction set architecture (ISA), while maintaining backward compatibility.

Architectural innovations include a hardware-scheduled pipeline, high-bandwidth memory architecture, a flexible co-processor interface, enhancements for conditional and bit-level operations, and extended debugging capabilities including trace and profiling features. Exploiting the inherent scalability of the architecture, LSI Logic plans a family of cores spanning a range of requirements from high performance to extremely low power consumption.

``We've had tremendous success with the original ZSP superscalar architecture licensed by Broadcom, IBM, Conexant and others,'' said Giuseppe Staffaroni, vice president and general manager of LSI Logic's Broadband group. ``The ZSP G2 architecture extends our offering to the highest levels of signal processing performance. Our licensees can leverage the capabilities of this architecture to realize optimal system-on-chip solutions for the next generation of communications products.''

At the Microprocessor Forum's DSP seminar Thursday, LSI Logic will provide an initial look at the first core implementation based on the G2 architecture -- the ZSP600 -- to be available for licensing with system-on-chip designs in the first quarter of 2002. A quad-MAC, 6-issue superscalar DSP core, the ZSP600 delivers up to 1200 MMACs and 1.8 billion instructions per second -- equipped to meet the ever-increasing signal processing requirements of today's high performance communications systems. The ZSP600 provides the highest DSP performance available in an open architecture licensable core.

``The original ZSP core was the pioneer superscalar DSP solution and LSI Logic's G2 architecture clearly demonstrates the extensibility of that platform,'' said Will Strauss, president of the market research firm Forward Concepts (Tempe, AZ). ``The ZSP600 shows that LSI Logic is committed to a roadmap of continued performance advancement, assuring their customers of a migration path for their own future products.''

With the ZSP G2 architecture, LSI Logic continues its focus of facilitating independence from proprietary DSP technology. Through licensing, the ZSP open architecture strategy places high performance DSP technology directly into the hands of system designers. The ZSP G2 architecture is supported by the ZSP Solution Partners program, comprising best-in-class third party application and software vendors, as well as by LSI Logic's ZOpen(TM) development framework, which simplifies code development and integration.

About LSI Logic's ZSP Family of DSP Cores

LSI Logic's ZSP superscalar signal processing technology provides the highest performance open architecture DSP cores available today. These licensable and fully synthesizable cores have proven themselves in ASICs and standard products alike. The ZSP architecture -- now in its second generation - has been optimized with respect to code density, compiler performance and ease of programming. It is supported by a growing list of software Solution Partners. For more information about the ZSP visit the website at http://www.zsp.com or send e-mail to dsp-mktg@zsp.com.

About LSI Logic Corporation

LSI Logic Corporation is a leading designer and manufacturer of communications, consumer and storage semiconductors for applications that access, interconnect and store data, voice and video. In addition, the company supplies storage network solutions for the enterprise. LSI Logic is headquartered at 1551 McCarthy Boulevard, Milpitas, CA 95035, 866-574-5741, http://www.lsilogic.com .

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