FEBRUARY 2006 £3.80 - Index of

INFO & MARKET NEWS & NEW PRODUCTS
14
New 16-bit XAP4 processor core
Cambridge Consultants has
released a new 16-bit RISC
microprocessor IP core, which it
will feature at the Design &
Reuse IP-SoC conference in
Grenoble, France on December
7th and 8th 2005.
The all-new 16-bit XAP4 features
a modern, high-performance
RISC architecture with low gate
count, low power consumption
and high code density. It is optimized
for use in cost and performance
sensitive ASIC designs
and is available for evaluation
now. On a 0.18 micron CMOS
fabrication process, XAP4 can
deliver up to 63 Dhrystone MIPS
at a clock frequency of 117
MHz. This benchmark performance
of 0.54 MIPS/MHz is a
50% improvement over Cambridge
Consultants’ previous 16bit
processor, XAP2, which has
been manufactured in hundreds
of millions by licensees such as
CSR, and in ZigBee radios, automotive
devices and low-power
industrial and medical sensors.
The XAP4 has both 16-bit data
and address buses and is capable
of running programs up to
64 kBytes. The first implementation
of the processor has a two-stage
pipelined Von Neumann architecture.
It is delivered to licensees as a
soft IP core in Verilog RTL that can
be synthesized in as few as 12k
gates for ASICs where die size
and power consumption must be
as small as possible. Cambridge
Consultants has already delivered
XAP4 to one licensee and is in discussion
with other prospective cus-
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tomers at present.
The 16-bit XAP4 is the latest
addition to Cambridge Consultants’
microprocessor core lineup.
There is also the 32-bit XAP3
for more demanding applications,
and in development is the
XAP5 that also uses 16-bit data
but extends the address bus to
24-bits, providing support for
larger program sizes up to 16
Mbytes. All these processor cores
include Cambridge Consultants’
SIF debug logic, which provides
full control over the processor
and access to its debug registers,
together with non-invasive access
to any part of the processor’s
memory map for data acquisition
while a system is running.
The architecture and design of
the XAP3, XAP4 and XAP5
processors was conceived at
Cambridge Consultants to fulfil
the requirements of modern
ASIC-based systems running
code written by different programmers
including real-time
operating systems. All the
processors include hardware
support for privileged operating
system modes where code running
in user mode cannot corrupt
supervisor or interrupt code.
Code is position independent
and there is also support for
unaligned data access, making
programs easy to port and quick
to run. Most programs will be
written in C and the processors
feature direct support for many
of the language constructs,
which results in higher code density.
There is hardware support
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for rapid context switching, for
example, when interrupts occur,
and there are multi-cycle instructions
to speed up multiply, divide
and block copy operations.
All of Cambridge Consultants’
XAP microprocessors are supported
by its xIDE integrated software
development and debug
environment, which includes a
programmer’s editor, assembler,
debug interface, instruction set
simulator, project build manager
and GCC compiler, which provides
the path for programming
in C++. xIDE is quick and easy
to install and use on Windows
PCs, with Linux/Unix and Mac
OS versions also available.
xIDE can be customized to add
features specific to a licensee’s
ASIC or ASSP, and licensees can
brand and deliver xIDE to their
developers.
Other advanced technical fea-
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tures of the XAP3, XAP4 and
XAP5 include: hardware support
for operation as a slave processor
when a master processor
downloads a code image and
bootstraps the XAP, support for
multi-processor debug over SIF
and architectures for combining
XAP with Cambridge Consultants’
APE signal processing engine,
which offers a dynamic data path
routing capability. Details of the
cores can be found at
www.CambridgeConsultants.com
/ ASIC,
including trial downloads of the
xIDE software tools.
Cambridge Consultants Ltd,
Science Park, Milton Road,
Cambridge, CB4 0DW, UK.
Tel: +44 (0)1223 420024;
Fax: +44 (0)1223 423373;
www.cambridgeconsultants.com
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(067016-6)
elektor electronics - 2/2006