SANTA CLARA, CALIF. — Tensilica Inc. has launched an emulation, evaluation and development platform for its Xtensa application-specific processor cores. The XT1000 Emulation Kit provides a complete core-CPU emulation system with support for up to l5 MHz emulation frequency.

The XT1000 development board provides 1 Mbyte of SRAM, 2 Mbytes of synchronous SRAM, 4 Mbytes of flash memory and 256 kbytes of EPROM, and it supports cache memory emulation. Other platform hardware includes two RS-232 serial channels, a parallel FPGA configuration port, an expansion connector, power supply and 16-segment LED status display. Debug support and a real-time trace function are provided.

The kit "enables designers to evaluate various processor configurations in a system environment, and start debug early in the design cycle," said company spokesman Bernie Rosenthal. Its Xtensa Processor Generator is used to develop an application-specific processor core, which is compiled with CPLD synthesis tools to produce complex-PLD configuration data, he said.

This data is then downloaded to an Altera Apex 20K400 CPID device residing on the board through a parallel port using Altera's programming adapter, "or by copying the configuration data from PROMs located on the emulation board."

The PROM option allows the emulation board to be used "in a standalone mode in the application of interest," Rosenthal said.

The XT1000 kit has a resident debug monitor program, XMON, for user communications and debug facilities. The board's RS-232 ports provide the communications link to a Sun or Windows NT host for downloading and debugging user programs under control of a host resident debugger.

The emulation kit is priced at $10,000 and is available from stock.

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EETInfo No. 633