Orchidée Announces S11 (MC68HC11®) Family of Standard Microcontrollers Lausanne, Switzerland, January 16, 2002 - Orchidée Semiconductor has announced the introduction of the S11 family of microcontrollers which are pin-for-pin compatible with the industry standard MC68HC11® products. The chips will begin shipment directly to OEM's in Q1 of 2002 and are available in both through-hole and surface mount packages to maintain true replacement compatibility with the standard off-the-shelf microcontrollers. Orchidée, long known in the IP core licensing business as a provider of telecommunications and other networking cores, has moved headstrong into the fabless semiconductor business through the introduction of the S11 family. The S11 chips are both functionally and timing-compatible with the industry standard parts and will support all third-party software development tools. In addition, since they are fabricated in newer, state-of-the-art semiconductor technologies, they are capable of higher operating frequencies than the industry standard parts. As Don McCarthy, President of Orchidée explains, "The HC11 is perhaps the most powerful 8-bit microcontroller in the world and there have been an enormous amount of resources which have been invested over the past 10 years in the development of software for this platform. It figures to be around for a very long time to come." Adds McCarthy, "The S11 is based on Orchidée's mature IP core technology and is manufactured in state-of-the-art silicon foundries. more ->