1999-09-29 , S/IC-2091/46
Product News From Philips Semiconductors

Joint Demonstrations at Embedded Systems Conference

Integrated Chipware, a builder of software development tools for the production of high-performance applications, today announced that it will be demonstrating the first integration of hardware intellectual property (IP) and software IP tools at their booth (#1345) during the Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose, CA., September 26 - 30, 1999. The company will showcase the integration of its product icWORKSHOP™ with the products of its strategic hardware partners, PLX Technology and VLSI Technology a subsidiary of Philips Semiconductors.

icWORKSHOP, The RTOS Builder, is a powerful suite of development tools and reusable software components that allows real-time and embedded systems developers to rapidly create custom operating systems and applications. Developers who need fast time-to-market can take advantage of pre-configured, off-the-shelf software components to quickly build any type of operating system. For those developers seeking greater control or differentiation, the unique object-oriented component design allows for quick modification of existing components or for creation of custom components. icWORKSHOP lets developers design software that perfectly matches both application and hardware requirements.

Traditionally, developers have turned to general-purpose real-time operating systems to drive off-the-shelf processors. However, it makes little sense to drive newer, application-specific hardware or specialized SOCs with a general-purpose operating system. icWORKSHOP provides the customizability that other operating systems lack. By providing reusable, off-the-shelf components complete with object-oriented source code, icWORKSHOP allows developers to quickly build custom software components, or "software IP", that perfectly matches the corresponding hardware IP. With icWORKSHOP, developers can now design software in a manner similar to hardware design.

Integrated Chipware, Inc. and PLX Technology, Inc. have teamed together to integrate their products, icWORKSHOP and the PLX IOP 480, a high-bandwidth, high-performance, PowerPC™ I/O Processor. The integration provides significant time saving for developers who wish to incorporate the advantages of PCI into their designs.

With icWORKSHOP for the IOP480RDK, developers use state-of-the-art cross-compilers, cross-debuggers and visualization tools on a host workstation to build, download and run code on the IOP480RDK target development board.

The IOP 480 is the first I/O processor incorporating a PowerPC core, PLX's industry-leading PCI and Data Pipe Architecture™ technology, a flexible memory controller and integrated CPU support peripherals. The IOP 480 brings an unprecedented level of integration and I/O performance to embedded systems and adapter card PCI designs. IOP 480 design support is provided through Reference Design Kits (RDK) which include a flexible IOP development board, complete Orcad schematics, documentation, and software.

While most cross-development environments rely on a networking or serial interface for communications between the host development workstation and the target processor board, icWORKSHOP uses the PCI bus itself. This allows the IOP480RDK development board to be inserted directly into a PCI slot in a Windows NT host workstation. Communication between development tools running under Windows NT and target system code running on the IOP 480 processor takes place via a PCI backplane driver provided with icWORKSHOP.

Integrated Chipware provides a complete turnkey Board Support Package (BSP) for the IOP480RDK development board, including drivers for on-chip timers, serial interface, PCI controller, cache and memory management unit (MMU). All code is provided in source form and utilizes object-oriented programming techniques for maximum reuse.

"It makes little sense to build application-specific hardware and drive it with a general-purpose operating system" said Omar Ahmed President Integrated Chipware. "Only icWORKSHOP allows developers to get the full benefits of the PLX IOP 480 by enabling them to quickly use a custom operating systems that exactly matches their specified hardware."

Integrated Chipware, Inc. and VLSI are working together to integrate their products, icWORKSHOP and the Velocity Rapid Silicon Prototyping (Velocity RSP) system. The Velocity RSP systems are de-configurable and extendible SOC platforms made from reusable hardware components.

While the Velocity RSP comes with a prototyping board for mixing and matching hardware IP, icWORKSHOP provides a complete repository of software IP. This software IP can be used as is, replaced completely with customer IP or modified to create new components. A state-of-the-art build environment lets developers quickly select and use these components to build custom operating systems and applications.

Velocity RSP7 is the first in a family of RSP systems designed to speed the development and validation of embedded ARM based custom ICs. The system integrates IP reused directly from VLSI's vast portfolio of reusable IP and is targeted at customers developing ASICs for networking peripherals, VPN systems, and systems requirement ARM based control and wired connectivity. The RSP7 provides customers with time-to-market advantages for SOC designs through hardware/software co-development and co-verification.

Integrated Chipware provides a complete, turnkey Board Support Package (BSP) for the Velocity RSP7 development board, providing software IP to match the on-board VLSI IP blocks. IP support includes ARM7TDMI™ support, VRSPIO, VRSPRTC, VRSPI2C, VRSPHwTimer, VRSPFlash, VRSPSMEM, VRSPGPIO, and VRSPIntCtl. All code is provided in source form and utilizes object-oriented programming techniques for maximum reuse, extendibility, and customizability.

"The integration of the Velocity RSP and icWORKSHOP means we can now provide developers a way to shorten SOC time-to-market," said Omar Ahmed. "The software development phase has been enhanced to provide engineers with customizable, reusable software components that match their hardware components, so that they can build completely application-specific embedded systems quickly and efficiently."

PLX Technology Inc. ( www.plxtech.com), based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is a publicly traded, worldwide supplier of high-performance integrated circuits, software and reference design packages for the Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus market. PLX's PCI interface chips and I/O Processors are designed into a wide variety of applications including: embedded PCI communication systems, such as networking routers and switches; personal computer, server and workstation PCI adapter boards; and industry-standard PCI implementations such as CompactPCI and PCI Mezzanine Card (PMC).

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the eighth largest semiconductor supplier based on Dataquest's 1998 report^*). Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video, and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by systems labs. Additional information on Philips Semiconductors can be obtained by accessing its home page at http://www.semiconductors.philips.com

Integrated Chipware ( www.chipware.com), headquartered in Reston, Va., is a privately owned company that builds software development tools for the production of high-performance applications. The company's products reduce the complexities of system and software development while also increasing application performance and productivity. Integrated Chipware was founded in 1994 by a team of seasoned engineering and sales professionals with extensive development and production experience in the building of large, complex software systems.

^*) Based on Vendor Revenue from Shipments of Total Semiconductors Worldwide according to Dataquest's 1998 Worldwide Semiconductor Market Share report published in May, 1999.

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