The cores, which Altera calls "megafunctions," are available from Altera and those companies participating in the Altera Megafunction Partners Program.

The company said all of the cores have been ported to work in the new Stratix architecture, which boasts such advanced features as embedded digital signal processing blocks, TriMatrix memory, enhanced I/O capabilities and advanced clock-management circuitry.

The 58 intellectual-property cores optimized for Stratix devices are listed and available for download from Altera's IP MegaStore Web site (www.altera.com/IPmegastore). They can be accessed by entering the key word "Stratix."

Altera customers with a current MegaCore subscription for an IP core can integrate the new version supporting Stratix immediately for production designs.

IP bus vendor Sonics Inc. has added IP providers Cast Inc. and 3rd Eye Technology LLC to its growing list of partners for its Web-based SOCworks system-on-chip evaluation environment.

According to Sonics, Cast is making its I2C, UART, MAC10/100 and USB cores available on SOCworks, and 3rd Eye Technology is providing its authentication and encryption cores.

Sonics said the cores can be combined with numerous other IP cores into a designer's system or SOC platform using the site's graphical interface.

Designers can also perform simulation and detailed evaluation prior to licensing the cores. All the new cores comply with the Open Core Protocol standard from the Open Core Protocol International Partnership Inc. (OCP-IP) organization, a key enabler for their secure evaluation on the Web site.

Sonics also announced that it has added a new behavioral-modeling capability called QModels to the SOCworks site.

QModels allow designers to rapidly create behavioral representations of their own proprietary IP cores so that they can be combined with the site's commercial IP cores in the simulation and performance analyses conducted on SOCworks.

Using QModels, SOC designers can more readily assess their overall design concepts without having to host their most sensitive IP on the SOCworks site.

MIPS Technologies Inc. and Zoran Corp. have announced that Zoran has taken a license for the high-performance, low-power MIPS32 4KE family of cores from MIPS.

According to the companies, Zoran will use the cores to develop consumer goods in the digital camera, digital TV and DVD areas.

Zoran's initial 4KE-based development includes additions to its Coach (camera-on-a-chip) digital camera and digital TV processors and, in future, its DVD product solutions.