Aldec Adds ARM Cortex-A9 Support to HES-7 ASIC Prototyping Platform

Henderson, NV - December 10, 2012 – Aldec, Inc., in its commitment to support the growing requirements of hardware and software verification engineers, now supports ARM® dual-core Cortex™-A9 MPCore® application development and verification in its HES-7™ ASIC prototyping platform. HES-7 leverages Xilinx Virtex-7 2000T and Zynq™-7000 All Programmable SoC and includes peripherals supporting media interfaces, memories and additional connectors to expand the development of a wide array of SoC applications.

The HES-7 ASIC prototyping platform, coupled with open-source Linux, Android and FreeRTOS solutions available from Xilinx, provides software developers of ARM Cortex-A9 applications with a complete SoC platform. These applications, along with the 4 to 96 million ASIC gate scalable capacity of HES-7, deliver a powerful verification platform for design teams comprised of hardware and software engineers. 

Leverage Cortex-A9

Designers can now leverage the serial processing capabilities of the Cortex-A9 processor for applications that require intensive computations and operating systems with the parallel processing capabilities of HES-7 ASIC prototyping platform to create applications across a diverse range of markets including: Video, Communications, Control Systems and Bridging.

Essential SoC Peripherals

New SoC Peripherals provide designers the ability to interface real-world stimuli to the design-under-test (DUT) on the HES-7 ASIC prototyping platform. Users can utilize gigabit Ethernet transceivers to develop networking applications, WLAN 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth® v2.1 to develop wireless systems, or High Performance HDMI Transmitter to develop home entertainment products. Memories and connectors provide additional data storage for read/write capability of today’s popular memory interfaces, and the ability to connect external hardware with the HES-7.

 Availability

HES-7 with ARM Cortex-A9 support is available today with an industry-leading 1 year limited warranty. All current HES-7 customers with a dual-FPGA configuration will be provided the enhanced ARM Cortex-A9 daughterboard support with additional peripherals at no additional cost. Customers with single-FPGA HES-7 will receive the essential SoC peripherals daughterboard at no additional cost.

 For Technical Specifications and more on the HES-7 ASIC Prototyping Platform along with its enhanced capabilities, please visit www.aldec.com/products/HES-7.

 Prototyping with HES-7

• Available in a scalable capacity from 4 to 96 million ASIC gates
• Single and Dual FPGA Configurations Reduce Complex Partitioning
• Non-Proprietary daughterboard connectors

 Support for Xilinx Zynq

• Utilize ARM dual-core Cortex-A9 MPCore Microprocessor
  • Maximum Frequency of up to 1 GHz
  • Enhanced with NEON Extension and Single & Double Precision Floating point unit
  • 32 kB Instruction & 32 kB Data L1 Cache
  • Integrated processing platform with FPGA logic reduces bill-of-material (BOM) up to 40
• Free open-source Linux, Android, and FreeRTOS solutions available from Xilinx

Essential SoC Peripherals Included

• Media Interfaces – Ethernet PHY 10/100/1000, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, USB 2.0 DEVICE, USB 2.0 HOST, USB 2.0 OTG, HDMI, and Audio Codec (Stereo Speaker and MIC Interfaces)
• Memories –  SD Socket, SPI Flash, I2C Flash, NAND Flash, SO-DIMM DDR2
• Connectors – ARM Debug, RS232, I2C, SPI, and GPIO
• Additional 4x DDR3 Memory peripheral included with Xilinx Zynq

About Aldec

Aldec Inc., headquartered in Henderson, Nevada, is an industry leader in Electronic Design Verification and offers a patented technology suite including: RTL Design, RTL Simulators, Hardware-Assisted Verification, ASIC Prototyping, Design Rule Checking, IP Cores, DO-254 Functional Verification and Military/Aerospace solutions. www.aldec.com