News Archive
|
 |
May 22, 2007. BrightScale Inc., a
semiconductor company leading the revolution in
programmable HDTV chip sets, has successfully adopted
Target's C compiler technology for its new BrightScale
ArrayTM "BA1024"
media processor. This was jointly announced by
Target and BrightScale at the Microprocessor Forum in
San Jose, California, today.
BA1024 is a SIMD
architecture with 1024 processing elements, supporting
dual MPEG2 transport streams and simultaneous decoding
of dual HD H.264, VC-1 and MPEG2 video, as well as
advanced signal pre- and post-processing.
|
|
Target delivers a
comprehensive software development kit for the
BA1024, based on its patented graph-based optimising C
compiler technology. This SDK provides
BrightScale's customers with the ability to adapt their
end products to evolving video processing algorithms and
digital television standards.
With this announcement,
Target
adds
efficient techniques for instruction predication to
its
C compiler, which are essential for both SIMD and VLIW
compilation.
More details can be found in Target's and BrightScale's joint
press release. |
|
|
|
 |
November 30, 2006.
Target today announced that it has made
two new important steps in its international expansion.
First, Target announced its expansion
into the United States and Canada, with the appointment
of Steve Cox as its Vice President of Business
Development for North America. Steve is a 20 year
veteran of the computing and EDA industry. He will
be leading the deployment of Target's tools for custom
processor design at a time when multi-processor
system-on-chip
design in America is hot, especially in the telecom and
multimedia markets. Target's North American
activities will be run out of Boulder, Colorado. |
|
Secondly, Target announced that it
signed an exclusive agency agreement for the Israeli
market with ITEC, Israel's reputed EDA distributor based
out of Tel Aviv.
ITEC will deploy Target's processor design tools to the
many Israeli semiconductor design centres, which today
are at the forefront of the multi-processor system-on-chip
design wave.
The expansion into North
America and Israel is a key milestone
for Target, as it marks
exactly ten years of delivering
market proven tools that speed the design, programming,
and verification of custom processor cores.
For
more details, please consult our press releases on the
expansion into North America and
Israel.
|
|
|
|
 |
July 24, 2006. Atmel
Corporation successfully adopted Target's tool suite as
an integrated design and programming environment for the
floating-point DSP in its dual-processor platform. This
platform is targeted at high-end consumer applications
such as hands-free phones, robotics, acoustic
diagnostics, sound processing, music synthesis, and
ultra-sound scanners.
First, Atmel used Target's
retargetable tool suite to model its floating-point DSP
architecture and to tune its instruction-set
architecture for better performance. Next, a
software development tool-kit was generated for the DSP,
which Atmel can now deliver to its customers and partners. |
|
Atmel commented
that the quick availability of an efficient C compiler
was a compelling reason for selecting Target's tool
suite.
According to Atmel, benchmark
tests revealed that the execution time of the machine
code generated by Target's C compiler is very close to
the optimal solution for
its
floating-point
DSP architecture.
More
details can be found in our
press release.
|
|
|
|
|
March 6, 2006. SiTel
Semiconductor has signed a multi-year license agreement
to use Target's software tools to design and program its
next-generation DSPs for cordless and audio systems.
As a leading supplier of chip sets
for cordless communication, SiTel has a global share of
more than 30% of the DECT cordless phone chip set
market, and has won the market for cordless gamepads.
SiTel's choice for Target's tools is driven by the
company's direction towards flexible systems-on-a-chip
with differentiating features for next-generation
wireless systems, which may include e.g. VoIP telephony,
home entertainment, gaming, and headset functions.
|
|
These functionalities necessitate
more advanced small-footprint ultra-low power DSPs,
supported by efficient C compilation and debugging
tools.
Under the multi-year license
agreement, Target provides both its retargetable
Chess/Checkers tools to design new application-specific
DSPs, as well as software development kits (SDKs) to
enable SiTel's customers to program these DSPs.
For more information please read our
press release.
|
|
|
|
|
April 4, 2005. AOI
Technology Inc. today announced that it has licensed Target's Chess/Checkers
retargetable tool-suite for the design of flexible processor cores. Chess/Checkers
is being used successfully by AOI Technology as its main development environment
for its next-generation configurable LSI chips for multi-media systems.
AOI stated to have selected the Chess/Checkers tool-suite because of its
excellent support for digital signal processing functions, and its ability
to support a wide variety of architectures.
|
|
AOI Technology is a leading
provider of high-performance and low-power multi-media ICs for various still
image, video and audio codecs. AOI Technology, based in Tokyo, Japan, is
the joint-venture of Olympus Corporation and ITX Corporation.
For more information please read the joint press release.
|
| |
|
 |
July 7, 2004.
Philips has started the distribution of an advanced software development
kit (SDK) for its CoolFlux DSP core. Thise SDK, called "Checkmate for
CoolFlux DSP" was developed by Target and includes an optimising C compiler,
assembler, instruction-set simulator and graphical debugger.
According to Philips, one of CoolFlux DSP's distinguishing features is that
it has been designed for best C compiler performance. During the architectural
design phase, Philips made intensive use of Target's Chess/Checkers retargetable
tool-suite, in order to match the architecture to the application requirements
and to ensure efficient C compiler support.
|
|
Next the "Checkmate for CoolFlux
DSP" SDK has been automatically generated.
The SDK is already being used by CoolFlux DSP's lead customers, and an evaluation
license is available via Philips to subscribers of Synopsys' DesignWare library.
This announcement was made today by Philips and Target at ESEC in Tokyo. For more info see the joint press release.
|
| |
|
 |
May 11, 2004. Synopsys and Philips announced that Philips' CoolFlux DSP is now distributed as a StarIP block in Synopsys' DesignWare program.
CoolFlux DSP is the first DSP core that becomes available to the 25,000 DesignWare
users. The core joins the 16- and 32-bit microcontrollers from industry
leaders such as IBM, Infineon, MIPS and NEC.
CoolFlux DSP is a 24-bit low-power audio DSP, designed by Philips using Target's
Chess/Checkers tool-suite. |
|
Using the retargetable tools technology, Philips'
architecture design team was able to take C compilation aspects into account
from day one, resulting in a core with excellent C compiler support.
Read more about the Synopsys/Philips partnership in their joint
press release and in Synopys' Compiler magazine. For more information about CoolFlux DSP, visit the CoolFlux DSP website.
|
| |
|
|
February 9, 2004. Genum Corporation has sucessfully designed first-pass working silicon for its Yukon ultra low
power microprocessor core for hearing instrument products. To accelerate the
design of Yukon, Gennum used Target's Chess/Checkers retargetable tool flow.
Yukon is used in an audio processing system that has begun shipping
in volume.
|
|
Following the success of Yukon, Gennum also developed a new application specific
DSP core using the Chess/Checkers tool suite. This DSP will enable a variety
of advanced adaptive algorithms for hearing instrument devices, and will
be in production later this year.
|
| |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
July 9, 2003.
ST Microelectronics has successfully taped out its latest ADSL customers
premises (CPE) chip. Two of the critical blocks of this device were designed
with Target's Chess/Checkers retargetable tool-suite.
Both blocks are involved in iterative algorithms and high-data throughput
operations required to get the best performances of the ADSL physical layer
with the latest ADSL standards, including ADSL2, and ADSL+.
|
|
The resulting product will be capable of reaching speeds up to 20 Mbps, doubling the speed of current ADSL standard products.
This design win was announced by Target today, during a press conference
at ESEC in Tokyo. For more information please read our press release.
|
|
|
|
April 2003. Philips
has successfully designed its latest audio DSP, named "CoolFlux DSP", using
Target's Chess/Checkers tool-suite. The new design was announced by Philips
in the April 2003 edition of the DSP Valley Newsletter.
Philips reported that significant architectural exploration was done on the
CoolFlux DSP design, in very aggressive time scales. This allowed to
optimally control the power consumption.
|
|
As a result, CoolFlux DSP is an ultra-low power audio core. Philips reported
that a full featured MP3 decoder, automatically compiled with Target's C
compiler, requires less than 15 MIPS on the CoolFlux DSP, with a power consumption
of less than 1 mW.
For more details please consult the DSP Valley Newsletter article.
|
|
|
|
December 12, 2002. Target announced the availability of new verification capabilities in the Chess/Checkers tool-suite.
First, a retargetable test program generator for flexible processor
cores has been released. Secondly, Chess/Checkers now supports on-chip debugging of
flexible processor cores. For more information please read our press release.
|
|
|
|
|
|
June 6, 2002. An up-to-date tutorial on the nML processor description language
is now available on the web, at www.retarget.com/nml.
Next to the basic concepts of the nML language, the tutorial
describes recent language extensions to model complex pipeline and interlocking
behaviour of contemporary processor architectures.
|
|
|
