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Product category: Design and Development Software
News Release from: Wind River Systems
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 30 January 2002

Xilinx takes development
support from Wind River

Xilinx and Wind River have signed a multi-year alliance and OEM development tools agreement whereby Xilinx will sell a version of Wind River's development tools

Xilinx and Wind River have signed a multi-year alliance and OEM development tools agreement whereby Xilinx will sell a version of Wind River's development tools specifically designed for its next generation Virtex-II Platform FPGA for the PowerPC 405 processor. The agreement is part of Wind River and Xilinx's strategy to enable rapid adoption and optimisation of programmable platforms, and marks the first time Wind River has entered into an OEM agreement with a FPGA silicon vendor.

The new tool chain will enable hardware developers migrating to the Xilinx Virtex-II Platform FPGA to rapidly configure and program both the CPU core and Virtex-II Platform FPGA device.

With access to familiar, industry-standard development tools from Wind River, system designers will benefit from a significantly reduced learning curve when developing programmable platforms in a wide variety of market segments.

"The semiconductor industry is entering a new era in electronic design signified by accelerated technology advances, constantly changing requirements, fierce competition, and more than ever, uncertain commercial success of new electronic equipment.

Given these dynamics coupled with system architects' interest in reducing design risk and time-to-market, we are seeing a major industry shift towards completely programmable platforms", said Wim Roelandts, president and CEO at Xilinx.

"Partnering with Wind River to deliver established software tools will accelerate this shift by allowing a large base of embedded design engineers to fully exploit next generation programmable hardware/software system technology".

"Given our common visions of the co-processing and re-configurable computing landscapes, we're delighted to align with the industry leader in this exciting field of emerging technology", said John Fogelin, chief technology officer and vice president of Wind River's Platforms business unit.

"Our alliance with Xilinx will give FPGA developers the latest industry-standard tools to rapidly bring their applications to market and represents a key step toward optimising the benefits of programmable platforms while simplifying the development process".

Wind River will provide a specific toolchain for distribution by Xilinx that will include versions of Wind River's Diab C/C++ compiler suite, SingleStep with Vision software debugger and visionPROBE II on-chip hardware-assisted debugger.

Wind River and Xilinx will also continue to collaborate on a complete runtime solution for embedded FPGA developers.

These tools are ideal for hardware designers who want to move sequential parts of their code onto a processor core as well as low-level driver development.

FPGA designers that are exposed to the unfamiliar world of CPU development are now empowered to perform CPU development with relative ease, and can start making use of the embedded CPU immediately.

For software developers working with the Platform Virtex-II Platform FPGA, Wind River will continue to offer a complete set of development tools to compliment the tools distributed by Xilinx.

These tools are well suited for developers working with larger amounts of code who require advanced features for custom hardware bring-up, firmware development and application software development.

Xilinx will supply the Wind River tools in late Q1 2002.

The tools will be available in a development kit package or can be purchased separately.

The development kit offered by Xilinx will include Wind River's compiler, debugger, and on-chip hardware debug products with a reference/evaluation board, reference designs, application software examples, software drivers and documentation geared toward the development of FPGA designs.

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