Xilinx unveils cool tools supporting new Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs

The folks at Xilinx have announced their embedded development environment of tools and ecosystem technologies for supporting innovative system-on-chip designs targeting the company's newest 65 nm Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs.

Version 10.1 of the Embedded Development Kit (EDK), which delivers the 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.

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 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 MicroBlaze 32-bit processor enables greater cache interface flexibility.

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 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.