Celoxica Enables `Write Once, Run Anywhere' Reconfigurable Design.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

38th DAC CONFERENCE

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 20, 2001

Celoxica Limited today announced its platform abstraction layer (PAL) strategy for FPGA and system independent reconfigurable designs. Supporting the DK1 design suite, PAL simplifies the process of interfacing FPGA applications with on- and off-chip resources such as processors, memory, Ethernet MACs, video I/O chips or even other FPGAs.

PAL shields software engineers from low level interfaces to ease the integration of FPGAs to physical resources. It does this by storing the proprietary physical interfaces to platform resources in a single library called the Platform Resource Support Package (PRSP). The low level interfaces are wrapped in generic logical interfaces that are accessed using the PAL API.

"PRSPs are written once for each embedded system, the applications calling the API to access platform resources are then directly portable. We believe that this approach can reduce porting times by as much as 90 per cent," said Dennis Nye, senior vice president of Worldwide Sales & Marketing at Celoxica. "The Handel-C programming language has brought software engineers into the hardware design flow. PAL now lets them rapidly port designs from their prototype platform to their final system, or perform design reuse from one generation of a product to the next."

Nye continued: "So, at the same time as we are accelerating the development cycle for products leveraging FPGAs, we are allowing companies to make more effective use of their design resources."

About PAL

The process of interfacing an FPGA application to other parts of an embedded system is time consuming with today's tools and FPGAs do not have operating systems to enable their applications to be platform independent. For example; Wind River VxWorks uses BSP (Board Support Package) and Microsoft Windows NT uses HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer).

These issues can seriously impact a customer's time-to-market as such integration requires low-level physical design expertise.

PAL introduces a layered design methodology that generates platform independent code by replacing platform resource interfaces with generic interfaces so that hardware integration can be done in a Handel-C environment by a simple process of resource allocation.

PAL consists of three parts:

-- PAL API -- an API that defines a set of macros and functions that can be
used to form and access generic interfaces to platform resources. The API gives
Handel-C software engineers a simple way of communicating with hardware,
shielded from low level design considerations

-- Platform Resource Support Package -- a library of physical designs wrapped
in standard interfaces that can be accessed using the PAL API. The PRSP hides
the low level interfaces associated with FPGAs and peripherals

-- Engineered Platform Independent Application -- applications written using
the PAL API to access platform resources

PAL will initially support the generation of ports for:

-- Generic bus interface

-- Multi-port co-processing bus interface

-- Distributed bus for FPGA interconnection

-- Video I/O

-- Ethernet MAC

-- Data streaming

-- Memory access (on chip or off chip)

-- Message sending

-- Message receiving

Pricing and availability

PAL will begin shipping as a free bundle with Celoxica's RC100 and RC1000 development boards for rapid prototyping from Q3 2001. PRSP customisation is available through Celoxica's design services.

About Celoxica

Celoxica provides software products, development boards, IP cores and design services that enable design engineers to rapidly develop application logic for FPGAs and programmable logic devices. Celoxica's high-level approach leverages the world's first integrated development environment for true 'C' to hardware synthesis, supported by a range of development boards for rapid prototyping. By creating and leading the world of reconfigurable electronics, Celoxica is enabling customers to overcome costly development cycles and exploit ongoing revenue opportunities through hardware upgrade programs via the Internet.

Celoxica has alliances and partnerships with Ericsson Radio Systems AB, Infineon Technologies AG, Marconi plc, Matra Bae Dynamics France, Wind River Systems Inc. and Xilinx, Inc. The company employs over 100 people and is headquartered in Abingdon, UK, with additional offices in Campbell, California, USA; Yokahama, Japan; and Singapore.

For more information about Celoxica, visit www.celoxica.com or contact [e-mail]. For sales enquiries contact: Americas - [e-mail]; APAC - [e-mail]; Europe, Middle East, Africa - [e-mail].

Note to Editors: Celoxica and the Celoxica logo are the trademarks of Celoxica Limited. Any other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.