Accelerated Technology, MetaWare To Support ARC Cores
Realtime operating systems (RTOS) vendor Accelerated Technology Inc. (ATI; Mobile, AL) is now including the increasingly popular ARC microprocessor core in its Nucleus PLUS suite of RTOS products. What's more, the company is teaming up with well-known systems tools supplier MetaWare (Santa Cruz, CA). Not to be treated lightly, MetaWare is already enjoying design wins in powerhouses such as Advanced Micro Devices, IBM, and Sun Microelectronics.
The ARC is a user-customizable RISC that's "parameterizable" by systems developers using on-screen selection tools. The 32-bit embedded microprocessor core is a product of ARC Cores Ltd. (Middlesex, England). The promise of ARC is to let OEMs rapidly alter its feature set. The goal is to provide a fast route to task-customized processor-based ASICs and application-specific standard products, or ASSPS.
Another company playing in this marketplace is Tensilica (Santa Clara, CA). Tensilica says its core and Verilog and VHDL tools permits an OEM to design a customized microprocessor in one day! Products such as Tensilica and ARC cores even let you alter a machine's architecture at any time in order to stay in lock-step with changing market requirements or evolving communications protocols.
Compiler And Debugger Support
With this announcement, compiler support for the ARC core now includes the popular MetaWare High C compiler. (OEMs can also scale up to the MetaWare's C++ compiler). NucleusPLUS also integrates MetaWare's SeeCode debugger.
The expectation is that the Nucleus PLUS scalable kernel will now let OEMs customize and extend the ARC core's capabilities even more quickly and with fewer bugs. That's important if you're designing applications in quick-paced target markets such as the mobile phone arena, or the network router marketplace, or the digital camera space. In all of these emerging areas, getting your product into the limelight must be an essential development strategy.
ATI expects OEMs will see its source code and its no-royalties business model as a cost-effective way to do that. The list of organizations that have already taken advantage of ATI's business model--which includes well-documented source code and no royalty fees--include the likes of Motorola, Hyundai Networks, NASA, Panasonic, Sony and Texas Instruments.
"The addition of Nucleus is important," contends Bob Terwilliger, president and CEO of ARC Cores. "It adds to the appeal of the ARC core for deeply embedded systems."
For more information, contact Neil Henderson, president, Accelerated Technology, Inc. 720 Oak Circle Drive East, Mobile, AL 36609. Phone: (800) 468-6853. Contact Nitin Dahad or Bob Terwilliger at ARC Cores Ltd., Agonaut House, 369 Burnt Oak Broadway, Middlesex, England HA8 5XZ. Phone (44) 0 181 951 6123. Contact MetaWare, 2161 Delaware Ave., Santa Cruz, CA 95060. Phone: (831) 429-6382. For details about Tensilica cores contact Tensilica, 3255-6 Scott Blvd., Santa Clara, CA 95054. Phone: (408) 986-8000.