With its new Embedded initiative announced yesterday Altera is providing designers a single FPGA design flow based on its Quartus II development software—including the new Qsys system-level integration tool-- a common FPGA intellectual property (IP) library and new ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore and MIPS Technologies MIPS32 embedded processor offerings.
The design flow aims to allow embedded designers to quickly and easily target Altera's Nios II, ARM- and MIPS-based embedded processors and the recently announced configurable Intel Atom-based processor. The Qsys system-level integration tool, to be delivered later this quarter, leverages what Altera says is the industry's first FPGA-optimized network-on-a-chip technology to support a wide variety of industry-standard IP protocols.
As part of its initiative, Altera will expand its current embedded partner programs by embracing the broad ecosystems from ARM, Intel and MIPS Technologies. Altera reports it will deliver products that integrate hardened Cortex-A9 processor-based subsystems with 28-nm FPGA technology. More detailed information on ARM processor-based devices, the company said, will be made available in 2011.
Altera also expects to introduce the MP32 soft processor core based on MIPS Technologies' MIPS32 processor architecture in early 2011.