Design software is ARMed with processor support

Altium has included support for a range of discrete 32bit ARM-based processors in Altium Designer 6.0, the latest version of its unified electronic product development system.

Altium has included support for a range of discrete 32bit ARM-based processors in Altium Designer 6.0, the latest version of its unified electronic product development system.

Altium Designer integrates board- and FPGA-level system development, embedded software development and PCB layout, editing and manufacture within a single, unified application.

Altium Designer makes it fast and easy for engineers to develop and debug FPGA-based systems using soft processor cores implemented inside a programmable device using an interactive design methodology called LiveDesign.

Now, with the recent release of Altium Designer 6.0, LiveDesign is extended to the development of systems that use a discrete processor, such as the ARM720T-based Sharp BlueStreak LH79520, connected to an FPGA.

This speeds the development of ARM processor systems by allowing engineers to utilise the programmable resources of an FPGA to extend processor functionality and easily implement system components and logic.

Altium Designer 6.0 includes a full software tool chain for ARM-based processors that supports the ARM7, ARM9, ARM9E and ARM10E processor cores.

The software development tools are based on Altium's advanced Viper compiler technology, which is used across all processors supported by the Altium Designer system.

This provides full C-code compatibility between processors, and produces fast, highly optimised object code.

Initial benchmarking indicates that the Viper-based ARM compiler, included as a standard with Altium Designer 6.0, provides performance comparable with leading stand-alone professional compiler solutions.

This gives Altium Designer customers the highest quality ARM code generation capabilities as part of their unified development environment.

"ARM-based processors are extensively used in a diverse range of applications from wireless, networking and consumer entertainment solutions to imaging, automotive, security and storage devices", commented Nick Martin, founder and CEO, Altium.

"The provision of ARM support in Altium Designer brings new possibilities to ARM designers in all these industries".

At the hardware level, Altium Designer 6.0 includes a special FPGA-based "wrapper" core that allows designers to easily target Sharp's BlueStreak LH79520 ARM720T-based processor.

The wrapper provides hardware-level design compatibility with Altium Designer's native cross-device 32bit soft processor - the TSK3000, and allows designers to easily switch between the TSK3000 and a discrete LH79520 processor with only minimal modification to the hardware design.

It allows engineers using the BlueStreak to take advantage of Altium Designer's range of included FPGA-based peripherals by providing a Wishbone OpenBus connection with the processor, and facilitates full source-level code debugging.

The wrapper core also allows the use of Altium Designer's FPGA-based virtual instruments for interactive hardware debugging - LiveDesign.

Similar wrapper cores are included to support the hard PowerPC available with Xilinx Virtex-2 Pro FPGAs, the Xilinx MicroBlaze soft processor, and discrete PowerPC processors.

The LH79520 is the first in a number of ARM-based and other additional processor wrappers that will be introduced into Altium Designer to support the easy targeting of a wide range of third-party processors.

"This addition to Sharp's line of support tools for its BlueStreak processors demonstrates our commitment to providing engineers with integrated comprehensive solutions that facilitate the electronics design and development process".

says Scott Robertson, Senior Manager, Systems and Software Engineering of Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas.

"Recognising the growing demand for advanced FPGA systems, Altium Designer's unified design/development platform supports the Sharp LH79520's integration in these complex designs".

"Additionally, Altium's global distribution network will allow Sharp customers in all markets to benefit - speeding time to market and lowering development costs".

The provision of both hardware and software compatibility between processors means designers can easily migrate designs between execution platforms.

They can, for example, use the TSK3000 for initial device-independent system development wholly within an FPGA device, and then switch to the LH79520 discrete processor at the prototype stage to take advantage of the high performance of these devices.

"Large-scale programmable devices such as today's FPGAs are changing the way engineers think about electronic product development", Nick Martin continued.

"With Altium Designer 6.0 we've extended the reach of Altium Designer and its LiveDesign methodology to systems using discrete processors".

"This allows our customers to easily migrate designs from soft processors, and take advantage of the high performance available with devices like the Sharp BlueStreak".

To support the development of ARM-based systems, Altium will be releasing a new daughterboard for its unique NanoBoard LiveDesign development board that features a Sharp BlueStreak LH79520 MCU coupled to a Xilinx Spartan -3 FPGA.

The NanoBoard is a versatile "nano-level breadboard" that integrates with Altium Designer to provide a full LiveDesign implementation and interactive debugging environment for FPGA-based system design.

The NanoBoard features swappable daughter boards that house the target programmable devices and other resources, allowing development for multiple FPGA and processors architectures on the same basic platform.

Release timing for the new daughterboard will be announced shortly.

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