In today's SPAM, I got the following from CAST Inc.:

The Fastest 8-bit 8051 Core
We recently announced the R8051XC2, a new 8051-compatible microcontroller core that's very fast, quite configurable, and great for ASICs or FPGAs.

Building on our 8051 experiences going back to 1997, this core uses a smart architectural design to run up to 12.1 times faster than the original 8051 chip. That's the fastest 8-bit 8051 figure we can find in the published literature. It's also very easy to configure with different capabilities and peripherals support, and you can choose from several pre-packaged versions or the fully-configurable version to suit your budgetary and project needs. Read more in the datasheet or news release.

Here's the link to their BS page: http://www.cast-inc.com/cores/r8051xc2/index.shtml

This is clearly bunk, as they've completely ignored the last 15 years' progress in 805x performance.

The only multi-kilobuck IP of theirs that ever warranted, in my eyes, a quick look was their EPP target, and that, of course, was bunk, too, as it only replaced a single nand gate with two passives, and a single flipflop with tons of stuff that merely proved they didn't study the interface before embarking on their task.

Has anybody here ever used one of their IP products?

I find it interesting that they're clearly unaware of SiLabs' products, or of Dallas, or of the faster Philips and Atmel (yechh!) products.

RE