Xilinx Unveils Embedded Development Environment and Ecosystem Supporting New Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs

Xilinx Unveils Embedded Development Environment and Ecosystem Supporting New Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs

Embedded Development Kit (EDK) 10.1 Kick-Starts PowerPC 440 Processor Embedded Designs, Enables Support for Operating Systems, Tools and Boards

SAN JOSE, Calif., April 14, 2008 /PRNewswire/ — Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX) today announced its embedded development environment of tools and ecosystem technologies for supporting innovative system-on-chip designs targeting the company’s newest 65nm Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs. Version 10.1 of the Embedded Development Kit (EDK), which delivers the award-winning Xilinx Platform Studio embedded tool suite (XPS), includes new high-performance processing design capabilities and enables immediate support from world class embedded solution providers like Avnet Electronics Marketing, Green Hills Software, LynuxWorks, Lauterbach, MontaVista, TimeSys and Wind River Systems.

Xilinx has collaborated with industry leading third-party embedded development providers to offer support for popular embedded system solutions in the area of hardware platforms and Real Time Operating Systems (RTOS), as well as development, debug and trace software tools. The following embedded solution providers will be offering support for Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT with dual PowerPC 440 processors and will be exhibiting at ESC:

Avnet — Virtex-5 FXT FPGA Evaluation Kit, including PowerPC 440 processor reference designs

Green Hills Software — Integrity 5.0.10 RTOS and Multi IDE support

LynuxWorks — Bluecat Linux

Lauterbach — Trace32 software debugging and trace analysis support

MontaVista — MontaVista Linux Pro 4.0.1 RTOS support

TimeSys — LinuxLink Linux 2.6 support

Wind River Systems — Linux GPP 1.3 and VxWorks 6.3/6.5 RTOS support

“The introduction of Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs with dual PowerPC 440 blocks opens up tremendous new opportunities for developers building applications requiring both real-time and general operating systems,” said Robert Day, vice president of Marketing at LynuxWorks. “The Xilinx EDK 10.1 tool suite gives designers what they need to develop and program their systems with either our BlueCat Linux and/or the upcoming LynxOS 5.0 real-time OS to meet these unique requirements.”

Getting Started with Xilinx Embedded Development Kit (EDK) 10.1

Architecting and programming embedded processing systems using the Virtex- 5 FXT platform is simplified by EDK 10.1 tools. Automated design wizards guide designers through the steps for implementing the high-performance 128-bit Processor Local Bus (PLB), a component of the IBM CoreConnect(TM) bus standard that can be configured for both shared and point-to-point system connections. The new tools also introduce co-processing support for the PowerPC 440 processor block enabled by a new Auxiliary Processor Unit controller (APU). The APU can also be used to directly interface to high-speed FPGA hardware, perform PowerPC 440 processor code profiling and enable analysis for supporting software and hardware optimization.

The new EDK 10.1 release also includes new and updated IP cores to optimize system design. Peripherals such as SPI, DDR2, DMA, PS2, Tri-Mode Ethernet MAC with SGMII support, and Flexray peripheral options, as well as PCI Express driver support for DMA are included. Improvements to the Multi-Port Memory Controller and the Memory Interface Generator (MIG) tools empower greater interfacing options for memory intensive applications. In addition, an update to the award winning MicroBlaze 32-bit processor enables greater cache interface flexibility.

“Xilinx Platform Studio and the EDK 10.1 technology provided Avnet with easy to use interfaces that allowed us to quickly integrate our new Virtex-5 FXT FPGA Evaluation kit into the Xilinx development environment,” said Jim Beneke, director of Technical Marketing at Avnet Electronics Marketing. “We provide a simple description file with any new development board we create, and the Xilinx design wizards can automatically map on-the-fly tool support for our development platform.”

Pricing and Availability

All third party products and technologies are sold and supported by those vendors. The Xilinx EDK 10.1 release is immediately available for USD $495, and conveniently bundles the XPS 10.1 tool suite with a processing IP library, software drivers, documentation, reference design examples and the MicroBlaze 32-bit soft processor. EDK is available as part of the unified ISE Design Suite, along with other Xilinx products such as ISE Foundation design tools, ChipScope Pro analyzer, System Generator for DSP tool, AccelDSP synthesis tool, and PlanAhead(TM) design software. The ISE Design Suite makes it easy to order, register, install and/or evaluate all Xilinx development and debug tools from a single download site or one DVD.

EDK 10.1 supports a broad range of computing platforms, including Windows XP Professional (32-bit), Windows Vista Business (32-bit), Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 4 (32- and 64-bit), Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5 (32- and 64- bit), SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 (32- and 64-bit).

To purchase or evaluate the EDK with Platform Studio tool suite, and for complete information on all Xilinx embedded processing solutions, please visit: www.xilinx.com/processor