Japan's MegaChips which makes customised LSIs has signed up with MIPS to buy shedloads of its MIPS32 4KEc processor cores.

The chips will be used for next-generation digital consumer products such as digital photography, HDTV, portable media, HD security monitors and gaming. A spokesman said that the economic downturn hasn't stifled consumer demand for devices that combine sophisticated features with superior performance, but low cost.

The high performance and power-efficiency of MIPS Technologies' 4KE core, allows the outfit to deliver best-of-breed designs that exceed customer expectations and satisfy their bottom-line requirements, he enthused. MegaChips is one of the bigger Japan's fabless semiconductor companies.

The configurable MIPS32 4KE family boasts enhanced capabilities and features such as code compression, multiple sets of 32-bit registers, larger write-back cache memories and extensive clock gating. Reviews say that 4KE cores give designers flexibility to optimise their applications by increasing performance while reducing die size and power consumption and, ultimately, system costs.