SAN JOSE, Calif., December 15, 1998—Xilinx, Inc. the world’s leading supplier of programmable logic, and T7L Technology, a leading supplier of synthesizable CPU cores, today announced the TX400 family of RISC CPU cores that have been optimized specifically for Xilinx XC4000 FPGAs. Also available is a complete suite of development tools including a Xilinx FPGA-based hardware development board, and an integrated suite of software tools. 

Based on a proprietary, scaleable RISC architecture, T7L offers 26 variations of the TX400 CPU core. Each has been optimized for specific system requirements ranging from simple 8-bit microcontrollers to powerful 32-bit processors for embedded and digital signal processing applications. 

"In the past, it was difficult for FPGA users to implement a CPU core in a single FPGA due to limited capacity," said Terence Lo, T7L’s vice president of marketing. "This is no longer a problem with the gate capacities available with the Xilinx XC4000XL and XV devices. In addition, we designed our cores to take advantage of Xilinx architectural features, such as the distributed Select-RAM feature, thereby ensuring high performance while using minimal resources. This is the pioneer CPU core family dedicated to FPGA applications." 

The TX400 family is built around a three-stage, fully balanced pipeline engine with separate 8- to 32-bit data and 10- to 24-bit instruction buses. A flexible and selectable instruction set can be extracted from a supplied master function library. Parameter driven configurable design allows fast and easy customization. The cores are delivered in Xilinx optimized netlist or VHDL source code formats. 

The CPU design uses a function-generator based logic structure that has been fully optimized for the Xilinx FPGA architecture. A free 8-bit evaluation version is available to download from www.t7l.com. Customers with a Foundation or Alliance Series software can evaluate this core in a Xilinx FPGA. 

"Once again, the Xilinx architecture proves to be the preferred delivery platform for programmable logic cores," said Rich Sevcik, Xilinx senior vice president of software. "The new T7L solution helps fill a need for truly optimized, high performance processor cores in our CORE Solutions product portfolio." 

T7L prices its core products, which serve as the "brain" and provide flexibility and reconfigurability, from US$4,000 to US$100,000, varying on complexity and support required. A lower entry point will benefit all Xilinx users in various industries: telecommunication, equipment, peripheral and consumer electronics products. Included with the price of each core is a complete software development environment with an integrated windows-based project manager, assembler, source code editor, object file linker, debugger, and vector generator. A C compiler will be available in the first quarter of 1998. T7L also supplies a Xilinx-based hardware development board that allows customers to test the cores, develop, and debug code in an XC4010E FPGA device. An optional daughter card allows the use of larger FPGAs. The board is available for $295. 

About T7L Technology and Xilinx 

Founded in 1997, T7L Technology delivers the most economical CPU core solution for the FPGA market. T7L products support industry standard design language (VHDL) and runs on popular computer platforms (Windows95 and up). The company is located at 220, Duncan Mill Rd., Suite 307, North York, Ontario, Canada, M3B 3J5 and 780, Charcot Ave., San Jose, Calif., USA 95131. Phone: (416) 445-4783, Fax: (416) 445-5741, email: t7linfo@t7l.com, web: http://www.t7l.com. 

Founded in 1984, Xilinx is the world’s largest supplier of programmable logic solutions producing industry-leading device architecture and world class design software. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., the company pioneered the market for field programmable gate array (FPGA) semiconductor devices that provide high integration and quick time-to-market for electronic equipment manufactures in the computer, peripheral, telecommunications, networking, industrial control, instrumentation, consumer, and high reliability/military markets. For more information on Xilinx, access www.xilinx.com. 

Note to editors: Xilinx is a registered trademark of Xilinx, Inc. All XC-prefix product designations, SelectRAM, and AllianceCORE are trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. S-CPU is the product of T7L Technology. All other brands or product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. 
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