Actel's "ARM MPU for the masses" microprocessor-core licensing deal
with ARM has come to fruition with the announcement that Actel
customers can now license a firm, Actel-architecture-optimised
version of the 32-bit ARM7TDMI-S core directly from Actel.
ARM and Actel
announced their licensing deal earlier
this year, at which time ARM officials said they chose Actel
over other vendors largely because Actel's flash-based devices
offer better IP (intellectual property) protection than
competing offerings. In the past, ARM has zealously guarded its
IP, mainly offering direct licensing. But Actel customers can
now get the core directly from Actel without negotiating with
ARM.
"Up until now there hasn't been a
synthesisable ARM solution in the FPGA space," said Dennis Kish,
v-p of marketing at Actel. "For people wanting to put a processor
in an FPGA, they didn't have many choices - or certainly a popular
choice like the ARM7, which is arguably the most used and
well-known 32-bit core."
The Actel version of the ARM core, called
CoreMP7, does not come in an entirely soft format - such as source
Verilog or VHDL code. Instead, it is a firm core. The companies
made that choice in part to ensure the core maintains a performance
of 25MHz in Actel devices and in part to ensure the core can't be
tampered with or ripped off, Kish said.
The core appears as a black box during the
synthesis phase of the design process, but users can adjust the bus
interface and peripherals and have "full" control of the I/O,
according to the company. To ease configuration of the core's
peripherals, Actel offers a new tool called CoreConsole.
The Windows-based tool allows users to
configure the processor's peripherals: interrupt controllers,
memory controllers, timers, serial interfaces, I/O ports, and
power-on reset circuitry. The tool also has repository of other
Actel cores complies with the SPIRIT (Structure for Packaging,
Integrating and Re-using IP within Tool-flows) standard.
For those already familiar with ARM's
RealView development tool suite, Actel also offers an
Actel-specific version of RealView.
The core consumes roughly 6,000 ProASIC
tiles or roughly 250,000 system gates, Kish said. Actel will
provide the core free to customers buying ARM-ready M7 ProASIC3
devices; the M7A3P250, M7A3PE600, and M7A3P1000 devices are
sampling now. The company expects to offer the core with other FPGA
families as well.
www.actel.com
www.arm.com