CPU Shack: Alchemy Au1000 MIPS Eng Samples

CPUShack

Here are some rare ones from Alchemy Semiconductor.

Alchemy was started in 1999 and developed the Au1 MIPS32 compatible core. Its Alchemy's own low power design, made to work with the MIPS32 ISA.

AMD bought Alchemy in 2002 to compete against Intel's StrongARM line.

Ironically, two of Alchemy's founders — chief technology officer Rich Witek, and vice president of engineering Greg Hoeppner — led the StrongARM design effort while at DEC.

Their first product was the 400MHz Au1000 which has 16K of I-Cache + 16K of D-Cache, a full R4000 MMU, and a MAC.

These are early Engineering Samples of the Au1000 and are marked Qual with a Wafer number (6-8 in this batch).

The Au1000 line was only made by Alchemy for a few months before AMD bought them, so these are fairly uncommon even in non ES form.

$7 each or a pair for $10