BINACHIP Joins Xilinx ESL Initiative; New ESL Starter Kit Targets Acceleration of High-Performance Embedded Applications Using Xilinx FPGAs.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- BINACHIP today announced it is collaborating with Xilinx, Inc. to provide integrated, high-powered electronic system level (ESL) design methodologies that support programmable systems designers targeting embedded processing and digital signal processing (DSP) applications. BINACHIP -- the newest member of the Xilinx ESL Initiative (www.xilinx.com/esl) -- is focused on automating the creation of high-performance embedded systems to reduce design times from months to days. The Initiative was formed to give software programmers and Xilinx FPGA users detailed information and technical resources for ESL design.

BINACHIP also today announced the immediate availability of an ESL Starter Kit, consisting of BINACHIP-FPGA and a Virtex(TM)-II Pro development board, allowing users to quickly design and build embedded applications that meet their price, performance, and time-to-market constraints.

As part of the Xilinx ESL Initiative, BINACHIP'S flagship product -- BINACHIP-FPGA -- now fully supports the Xilinx ESL flow and the Virtex-II Pro line of FPGAs. BINACHIP-FPGA lets users determine if a portion of the binary code will benefit from a hardware implementation. If so, it is automatically compiled into hardware and the appropriate hardware/software interfaces are generated, while the remaining code is translated into binary for the target processor. Depending on the application, the resulting implementation can provide a 10X to 50X speedup over a pure software implementation.

"BINACHIP enables designers to easily utilize FPGAs to optimize the performance of their embedded processing or DSP applications, while still using their current software development environment," said Steve Lass, senior director of Software Product Marketing at Xilinx. "We are pleased to have them as an ecosystem partner, and believe this is another important step toward broadening the popularity of ESL design for FPGAs."

"The Xilinx ESL Initiative is having enormous impact on the design community," said Susheel Chandra, BINACHIP president and CEO. "We are very happy to be working with them and look forward to providing advanced design methodologies to our mutual customers in the years ahead."

Price/Availability

BINACHIP's ESL Starter Kit is available now. Price is $4,995 and includes a three-month license for BINACHIP-FPGA and a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro development board. For additional information or to order, contact [e-mail].

About Xilinx ESL Initiative

The Xilinx ESL Initiative is a multi-faceted program aimed at proliferating high-level design methodologies and tool flows for FPGAs. The goal is to make it easier for hardware designers and software programmers to leverage Xilinx programmable devices for their next generation systems. Xilinx and participating companies are focused on improving ease of use, quality of results and interoperability standards through technical collaboration, cooperative marketing and joint educational activities. For more information about the Xilinx ESL Initiative, visit www.xilinx.com/esl.

About BINACHIP

BINACHIP develops and markets software products and services that enable embedded systems developers to design and implement high-performance applications within their price/performance and time-to-market constraints. It also enables seamless migration of software from older-generation, general-purpose, embedded processors into newer hardware, and mixed hardware/software platforms of the future. BINACHIP's core technology is the result of work done at Northwestern University by co-founder Professor Prith Banerjee and his team. He is currently Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. BINACHIP is privately held with offices in San Jose, Calif., and Glenview, Ill. For more information and to download demo versions of BINACHIP software: www.binachip.com.