Xilinx selects Tensilica processor to support FPGAs

Tensilica Inc. has announced that its Xtensa-V configurable processors will now support Xilinx Inc. FPGAs. Tensilica is the newest member of the Xilinx AllianceCORE program.

According to Tensilica, through its web-based Processor Generator and Virtex-II-based XT2000-X processor emulation system, system designers can iterate, implement, and debug custom Xtensa processor configurations and view the results in Xilinx FPGAs within hours. Additionally, designers can also run Xtensa processor emulations in real hardware at speeds closer to actual system requirements.

"We are impressed by the capabilities of the Virtex-II devices from Xilinx," said Steve Roddy, director of product marketing at Tensilica. "We configured the Xtensa processor to accelerate an MPEG-4 decoder system and created a demonstration for a recent trade show running real-time video and audio decode implemented fully in software running on the Xtensa processor on our board. This really showcases the power and performance of our configurable, extensible processor and the new Xilinx emulation system."

Additionally, the Xtensa Processor Generator also supports a configuration option to include a bridge to IBM's CoreConnect bus architecture. As a result, users of both Tensilica's and Xilinx's technologies can develop complex programmable systems using IBM's CoreConnect bus structure and any combination of Xtensa processors, Xilinx MicroBlaze soft processor cores, Virtex-II Pro devices with embedded PowerPC processors, and any of the CoreConnect peripheral cores offered by Xilinx. Both the Virtex-II Pro device and Xtensa processors are supported by WindRiver's VxWorks OS development environment.