Semiconductor maker Xicor Inc has come up with a single chip offering designed to provide all the functions required for the design of microcontroller, microprocessor and application specific integrated circuit ASIC systems. The X25383 supervisory chip can be used in any processor based product and uses a high speed 5 Mbps Serial Peripheral Interface to provide faster communication with new high speed processors. All processors need an external supervisor circuit to monitor their operation and provide a reset in the case of malfunctions. The new offering has a voltage supervisor designed to prevent a processor from operating when its power supply voltage is lower than its normal specification. A watchdog timer resets a processor when it malfunctions or doesn’t execute the intended software. The Milpitas, California-based company claims the chip can be used in products such as notebooks, DVD players, networking cards, pagers, set top boxes and GPS systems. The chip comes in two versions, the X25383 for Intel Corp microcontrollers and the X25385 for Motorola Inc microcontrollers. Both chips will be priced at just under a dollar when sold in quantities of 10,000.
