Xilinx Jump-Starts Embedded System Design with New MicroBlaze Embedded Kit

Low-cost kit includes Xilinx award winning Platform Studio Integrated Design Environment, Spartan-3E embedded board and flexible 32-bit MicroBlaze soft processor

SAN JOSE, Calif., October 30, 2006 – Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) today released the MicroBlaze™ Development Kit: Spartan™-3E 1600E Edition, a comprehensive design environment with everything embedded developers need to create processing-based systems. The Spartan-3E 1600E Edition delivers an integrated platform with hardware, design tools, intellectual property (IP) and reference designs to kick-start the development process. The fully integrated kit allows developers to rapidly customize their processor and IP to best suit their specific application and configure complete systems.

“Embedded processing customers continue to demand complete solutions to quickly start and complete their hardware and software development,” said Lawrence Getman, director of marketing for the Embedded Processing Division at Xilinx. “The fully integrated MicroBlaze embedded development kit enables both rapid hardware and software creation on an inexpensive, pre-verified Spartan-3E platform to accelerate the design of low-cost embedded solutions.”

Complete Development Kit
The MicroBlaze Development Kit: Spartan-3E 1600E Edition supports flexible 32-bit MicroBlaze soft processing design for the Xilinx Spartan-3E series of Platform FPGAs. MicroBlaze soft processing cores are instantiated in FPGA hardware, and combined with IP peripherals, FPUs and other co-processing engines to enable a fully customizable platform that meets the developer’s demanding and ever-changing embedded design requirements.

The kit includes:

• Spartan-3E SP3E1600E development board;
  
• Fully licensed versions of the award-winning Platform Studio embedded tool suite and ISE™ FPGA design software;
  
• Extensive peripheral support of processing IP cores;
• JTAG probe for code download, debug and FPGA programming;
• Serial and Ethernet cables, regional power supply, pre-configured FLASH device;
• Variety of pre-verified reference designs and full documentation; and
• Embedded operating system support

Central to the SP3E1600E board functionality is the Spartan-3E XC3S1600E-4FG320C device with platform logic, DSP co-processing and embedded system integration capabilities. The 1600E evaluation board provides a rich set of features and includes several options for peripherals, memory, displays, connectors, and interfaces that enable designers to easily and cost effectively prototype and evaluate their embedded system design.

Kit Accelerates Development
Xilinx Platform Studio’s intelligent design tools combine with a programmable FPGA platform in the MicroBlaze Development Kit to enable developers to craft embedded systems with the optimal combination of features, performance, area and cost. They can choose the most effective processing system for the target application, select IP, optimize performance, and validate software on the development board before their own custom hardware is available.

In addition, the pre-verified reference designs delivered with the development kit offer a broad set of options for rapidly configuring complete systems, allowing developers to get the basic design running quickly so they can focus more of their valuable time on optimizing the application. These include both hardware and software implementations to exercise the many features of the SP3E1600E platform, such as Ethernet, DDR memory, and various FLASH functions. Embedded OS (eOS) support is also included for Mentor Nucleus, Petalogix μClinux and Micrium μC/OS-II.

Pricing and Availability
The MicroBlaze Development Kit: Spartan-3E 1600E Edition (Model #: DO-S3E1600E-DK-UNI-G, lead free RoHS compliant) is available now for purchase at $595 USD. The ISE FPGA and Platform Studio embedded tools shipped with the 1600E Edition kit support the following computing platforms: Windows® 2000 SP2, SP3, SP4, and XP SP1, SP2, Solaris® 2.8/5.8 and 2.9/5.9, as well as Linux® Red Hat® Enterprise 3 and 4. For more information on Xilinx embedded development kits, including the Spartan-3E 1600E, visit www.xilinx.com/embdevkits.