CAST's Talos Evaluation Kits Help Designers Choose the Best Microcontroller/Processor IP Cores

Woodcliff Lake, NJ, April 25, 2012 — Semiconductor IP provider CAST, Inc. now offers the Talos Series of integrated hardware/software systems that facilitate the evaluation of the company’s 8-bit 8051 microcontroller and 32-bit BA22 embedded system processor IP cores.

The Talos Series combines a hardware processor core, peripherals, interconnects, and memory with essential software, programming tools, and sample applications so a potential customer can begin executing the system immediately. Customers can run their own performance, power, or code benchmarks, interface the processor with their own hardware system, and fully exercise and evaluate the processor to determine how well it will satisfy their specific project requirements.

"Designers considering IP are tired of wading through marketing claims and puffed up specs. With Talos we offer a simple proposition: try it for yourself," said Nikos Zervas, vice president of marketing for CAST. ”We know the extreme code density of our BA22, the flexibility and performance of our 8051s, and the other technical advantages of our processors make them the best solutions for many systems, and so we’re happy to help designers confirm this by offering Talos to any qualified engineers who are seeking superior IP.”

Each Talos Series Evaluation Kit is built on a Terasic DE0-Nano Development and Education board, which uses an Altera Cyclone® IV 4C22 FPGA. Two versions are available now:

• Talos-8051 hardware includes the R8051SC2 CPU with 256 bytes of internal RAM, 16 KB of external program memory - ROM, 16 KB of external data memory - RAM, two timers, two external interrupts, and multiple data interfaces.
• Talos-BA22DE hardware includes the BA22-DE Deeply Embedded Processor CPU, 64KB memory, 16 general-purpose registers, a floating point unit, an integer multiplier and divider, and several common peripherals (PIC, TT, UART, I2C, SPI, GPIO).

The Talos Series Evaluation Kits are part of the full line of microcontroller and processor IP cores available through and supported by CAST. Learn more by calling +1 201.391.8300 or visiting www.cast-inc.com.