Changes
COTS
,Created page with "'''[[COTS]]''' stands for '''[[Commercial Off-The-Shelf]]''' and means any component that is freely available and/or well-documented. == IC == Especially in Integrated Circui..."
'''[[COTS]]''' stands for '''[[Commercial Off-The-Shelf]]''' and means any component that is freely available and/or well-documented.
== IC ==
Especially in Integrated Circuit (IC) chips, it is the contrary to [[ASIC]], "Application-Specific IC" that are custom-built. [[COTS]] components normally are mass-produced in higher numbers and, therefore, cost-effective.
As supply chains for chip manufacture were all out-sourced to South East Asia, where Red China uses massive government subsidies and workers live in barracks, many former chip manufacturers in the EU/USA went out of business as customers (like "Apple") discontinued their domestic-built manufacture and relocated to Red China. This makes costs for creating ASIC chips much more prohibitive, reserving it to the biggest companies; many chip designers (ARM Assoc., ex-Acorn) now are "No-Fab", meaning they just sell the designs and specifications to other companies.
[[CPLD]] and [[FPGA]] re-programmable chips have alleviated this, so designers can use IPs or "Softcores", Instruction set Processors, to attain ASIC capabilities; as reprogrammable chips now are available to the hobbyist market, discontinued chips can be simulated by those chips.
== CPC ==
The Amstrad CPC does not make heavy use of ASICs; the [[MSX]] series, however, holds the pole-position as it is exclusively constructed using [[COTS]] component so many manufacturers could build them. Commodore, instead, acquired MOS technologies and relied heavily on ASIC chips for all their product lines apart from the IBM PC/XT/AT-compatibles.
The CPC uses those [[COTS]] chips:
* Zilog [[Z80]] CPU
* General Instruments [[AY-3-8912]] [[PSG]], also built by Yamaha as the [[Ym2149]], as sound chip (also used in the [[MSX]] platform)
* Motorola [[6845 CRTC]]; however, the different manufactures use by Amstrad cause incompatibilities, and it was combined to a Gate Array [[ASIC]]. In later generations (cost-down CPC and CPD+), this chip was integrated into an Amstrad ASIC.
* NEC [[765 FDC]] as Floppy controller
* NEC [[8255 PPI chip]] as Programmable Peripheral Interface (PIO)
== IC ==
Especially in Integrated Circuit (IC) chips, it is the contrary to [[ASIC]], "Application-Specific IC" that are custom-built. [[COTS]] components normally are mass-produced in higher numbers and, therefore, cost-effective.
As supply chains for chip manufacture were all out-sourced to South East Asia, where Red China uses massive government subsidies and workers live in barracks, many former chip manufacturers in the EU/USA went out of business as customers (like "Apple") discontinued their domestic-built manufacture and relocated to Red China. This makes costs for creating ASIC chips much more prohibitive, reserving it to the biggest companies; many chip designers (ARM Assoc., ex-Acorn) now are "No-Fab", meaning they just sell the designs and specifications to other companies.
[[CPLD]] and [[FPGA]] re-programmable chips have alleviated this, so designers can use IPs or "Softcores", Instruction set Processors, to attain ASIC capabilities; as reprogrammable chips now are available to the hobbyist market, discontinued chips can be simulated by those chips.
== CPC ==
The Amstrad CPC does not make heavy use of ASICs; the [[MSX]] series, however, holds the pole-position as it is exclusively constructed using [[COTS]] component so many manufacturers could build them. Commodore, instead, acquired MOS technologies and relied heavily on ASIC chips for all their product lines apart from the IBM PC/XT/AT-compatibles.
The CPC uses those [[COTS]] chips:
* Zilog [[Z80]] CPU
* General Instruments [[AY-3-8912]] [[PSG]], also built by Yamaha as the [[Ym2149]], as sound chip (also used in the [[MSX]] platform)
* Motorola [[6845 CRTC]]; however, the different manufactures use by Amstrad cause incompatibilities, and it was combined to a Gate Array [[ASIC]]. In later generations (cost-down CPC and CPD+), this chip was integrated into an Amstrad ASIC.
* NEC [[765 FDC]] as Floppy controller
* NEC [[8255 PPI chip]] as Programmable Peripheral Interface (PIO)
