MENTA unveils new eFPGA technology

Montpellier, France -- March 7, 2006 -- MENTA, a fabless semiconductor company, is presenting a solution for IC designers who need an embedded FPGA (eFPGA) macro in their ASIC or SoC design. Our solution provides a complete set of software and hardware IP solutions for Digital Signal Processing, networking, telecommunication, wireless communication, security and multimedia applications.
 
MENTA has developed a customizable, domain-specific reconfigurable core (eFPGA) for ASIC or System-on-Chip (SoC). The MENTA eFPGA core can be easily integrated into any design by three different ways: inside a general purpose processor (ICS: Integrated Core Solution); connected as a coprocessor to any processor (CCS: Coprocessor Core Solution); or as a peripheral through a system bus (PCS: Peripheral Core Solution).
 
The particularity of the MENTA technology relies in the tight coupling between the proprietary eFPGA and the processor or microcontroller. Programming is facilitated thanks to a C/C++ based IDE.
 
“FPGA vendors provide devices made of microprocessors embedded into reconfigurable logic – Menta goes the other way around: we embed eFPGAs into microprocessors: resulting chips are less expensive, and programming is much easier” says Laurent Rougé, CEO of MENTA.
 
The company is willing to retain most of the software flexibility in its approach while maintaining high performance results compared to stand-alone FGPA implementations. This is achieved through an innovative customizable eFPGA, capable of handling the most time consuming operations which are usually struggling microprocessors. This eFPGA is customized according to application needs: depending on the targeted application field, the eFPGA resources vary. At run-time, during software execution, the eFPGA is reconfigured on the fly for implementing the required functionality. This process is completely transparent for the software designer who can focus on application development without taking care of how the eFPGA is configured and used. Intensive run-time reconfiguration as well as domain-specific eFPGA fabric enables to lower the final cost and provides speedups where it’s really needed.
 
“Because all our customers needs are different, all our eFPGAs are different.”, said Laurent.
 
Current line of products features eFPGA-augmented microprocessor solutions ranging from compact microcontrollers to high-end 32-bit CPUs.
 
Our comprehensive development environment includes developments boards, software development tools, documentation and support. This tool suite is based on an intuitive graphical Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and includes “back-end” tools (compiler, simulator, profiler and debugger) enabling to developers to port their applications within a few hours.