Chip designers from Netherlands-based Philips Electronics and Britain-based ARM said on Wednesday they will introduce a robust and low-power processor based on a completely new, "clockless" design.
The design will be ready by early next year and the two companies said they will sell it to a chip maker who will use it in chips for cars and consumer electronics as early as 2005. They declined to name the chip maker.
Asynchronous, or clockless, chips operate without the rhythm of a power-hungry internal clock. The absence of a continuously ticking clock also helps to reduce electronic interference.
This makes clockless chips ideal for use in tough environments such as cars, where engine heat and shocks can disturb the clock, or in devices with limited battery life, such as portable music players, handheld computers and phones.
So far, the chip industry has not embraced it because it would mean having to send all its designers back to school.
ARM, the world's biggest designer for processor cores in cellphones and other consumer electronics, joined forces with Philips after it created tools to make it easy for the current generation of chip designers to develop clockless chips.
"When people see the benefits of this technology, they will see a need for implementation," said John Cornish, ARM's product marketing director, adding that ARM has identified chips for cars, consumer electronics and smartcards as the first opportunities.
Until now, clockless chips have been regarded as niche products for specific areas such as simple chips for smartcards.
With ARM on board, clockless chips are now set to enter the mainstream of semiconductors, said Wouter Van Roost, manager of Handshake Solutions, the Philips unit responsible for clockless chips.
"It was pretty limited so far, but you're looking at a much broader range of applications now," Van Roost said.
Possible applications also include sensors used in medical systems and security networks, where power supply problems have limited the potential usage.
Handshake Solutions has calculated that in some applications it can reduce energy consumption by at least 30 percent. It can even bring it down to zero, in products such as airbag sensors.
Asynchronous chips are also developed by US start-ups such as Orlando, Florida-based Theseus Logic and Calabasas Hills, California-based Fulcrum Microsystems.
Analysts have agreed that asynchronous chips, which compute on request rather than on a clocked rhythm, have the potential for more complicated uses.
What could help to convince industry sceptics that clockless chips are ready for prime time, however, is that Handshake's new chip development tools will make chip designers more productive. They need to write a fraction of the software computer code to operate the chips, said Ad Peters, Handshake's chief technology officer.
"The amount of code needed is a factor of 10 less," he said.
This is one of the reasons why ARM and Handshake Solutions can introduce their first design only a few months from now, whereas traditional designs would have taken longer to develop.
Handshake Solutions and ARM do not produce their own chips, but create designs that are used by chip manufacturers. Philips itself is Europe's number-three producer of semiconductors, with a strong position as a supplier of chips for consumer electronics and handsets.
It competes with Texas Instruments, the world's biggest cellphone chip maker, and Infineon, Freescale and STMicroelectronics, which are strong in consumer electronics, handsets and automotive chips.
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