Posted: July 27, 1998

Users of the LX-4080 RISC core from Lexra Inc. (Waltham, Mass.) can now test that core within a software environment via the LX-4080 Evaluation System.

According to Lexra, the hardware and software system supports development of ASICs and software based on the company's LX-4080 core, which executes a majority of the MIPS I instruction set. The environment includes a PC board with the LX-4080 test chip and is PCI-based, so users can connect it to Windows NT-based PCs or Sun Solaris-based workstations via a serial connection.

Such embedded development tools as a GNU C compiler and assembler, PMON debug monitor and WindRiver's VxWorks have been ported and verified using the evaluation system, according to Lexra.

The environment is priced at less than $10,000 and includes the board with mounted LX-4080 test chip, the Gnu C software tools, the PMON debug monitors and Lexra's verification suite. VxWorks is available separately from Wind River.

Embedded Performance Inc. (EPI; Milpitas, Calif.) has emulator support for the ARM7TDMI family of RISC microprocessor cores from Advanced RISC Machines Ltd. (Cambridge, England). The JTAG EmbeddedICE EtherNet Interface (Jeeni) is said to cut development cycles for ARM-based products and to provide non-intrusive control of the processors and target system.

The emulator communicates with the ARM CPU core using ARM's JTAG-based EmbeddedICE cores. It uses no target memories and requires no porting to the target system. Application code can be downloaded at > 50 kbytes/second. Features include Ethernet and high -speed serial interfaces to the host; unlimited software breakpoints and two hardware breakpoints; ROMless booting; compatibility with EPI, ARM, VLSI and other software tools; shared and remote operation for networking; compatibility with all ARM-based processors, cores and ASICs containing the ARM DI EmbeddedICE macrocells; and an internal ARM 710A cached processor for fast debugger operation.

Intellectual Property Group of Packet Engines Inc. (Spokane, Wash.) announced it has licensed its PE-GMAC soft core to Bay Networks Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.), which used the Gigabit Ethernet media access controller technology in its BayStack 450 switches, released this month.

According to Packet Engines, the PE-GMAC core has been licensed to more than a dozen networking-system and semiconductor companies .

The PE-GMAC core offers 1000X and GMII interfaces. It supports 802.3x flow control and autonegotiation for 1000Base-X, and it is available with or without FIFOs.

The core, which the company began shipping in September 1996, is provided to users in Verilog. The company said it continually updates the core in accordance with the IEEE 802.3z standard.

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