March 2, 2010 – Embedded World, Nuremberg, Germany — Express Logic, Inc., a worldwide leader in royalty-free real-time operating systems (RTOS), and IAR Systems, a leading provider of software tools for embedded systems, today announced a commercial-grade integration for developers of serious applications. The integration combines Express Logic’s ThreadX® RTOS and IAR Embedded Workbench® IDE in a form that is easily used out-of-the box by developers of embedded applications. Both Express Logic and IAR Systems products support most popular 32-bit architectures, including ARM’s ARM7, ARM9 and Cortex-M3, Freescale’s ColdFire, NEC’s V850, and Renesas’s H8. Now, developers using those processors can benefit from the seamless integration of ThreadX and IAR Embedded Workbench, enabling them to bring products to market faster and easier than ever before.

Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS is structured for use with IAR’s Embedded Workbench IDE in a source code project. Developers can immediately compile and build the RTOS library and link it with their application code that uses its services. IAR’s Embedded Workbench provides all the editing, compilation, debugging, and version control facilities to support embedded development. In addition, IAR Embedded Workbench now includes RTOS kernel awareness for ThreadX. This gives developers a view of all kernel objects and application threads, and enables them to set thread-specific breakpoints. ThreadX is provided with a quick-start demo application, with full source code, that developers can use to familiarize themselves with its features and mechanisms.

A full list of the IAR Kickstart kits supported by ThreadX can be found here http://www.iar.com/kits.

“Many of our ThreadX customers use IAR’s Embedded Workbench as their preferred development environment,” said William E,. Lamie, President of Express Logic. “Now, developers using Freescale’s ColdeFire can also enjoy the benefits of the ThreadX-IAR combination and speed their products to market faster.”

Commenting on the collaboration, Fredrik Medin, Marketing Director, IAR Systems says, “ThreadX RTOS and IAR Embedded Workbench complement each other extremely well and suit the development of a broad range of consumer and industrial applications. To be successful in these markets designs need to be introduced as quickly as possible and the combination of our products greatly aid that process.”

NUREMBERG, Germany, March 2 /PRNewswire/ — At Embedded World 2010 today, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) introduced the Xilinx® Automotive (XA) family of Spartan®-6 field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) optimized for applications requiring high-speed connectivity and high-resolution video performance. These automotive-qualified devices provide the flexibility, scalability, and integration needed to reduce the system cost of automotive infotainment, driver assistance, driver information, and in-vehicle networking products.

XA Spartan-6 FPGAs also provide the silicon foundation for the Xilinx Infotainment Companion Chip Targeted Design Platform that will be introduced later this year. Automotive developers will be able to rapidly scale their infotainment designs with XA Spartan-6 FPGAs as companion chips to standard processors or application-specific standard products (ASSPs). Xilinx is showcasing a demonstration version of the new platform this week at Embedded World 2010, March 2nd through 4th in Nuremberg, Germany (Hall 12, Booth #12-515).

“Automotive developers today are being driven to enhance the user experience with next-generation infotainment, driver assistance and driver information applications. But, they must do so with fewer resources, tighter budgets, and shorter market windows,” said Harvey Steele, vice president, Automotive, Consumer and ISM Business at Xilinx. “XA Spartan-6 FPGAs address the technical challenge through a scalable architecture, increased connectivity options, and higher integration, delivered with industry-leading quality and value. With our targeted design platform approach, we’re also making it easier to develop with our new devices and reduce overall system cost.”

XA Spartan-6 FPGA Family

XA Spartan-6 FPGAs provide a cost-optimized mix of logic and integrated features with a range of density and package options that enable developers to scale designs across multiple vehicle platforms. XA Spartan-6 LX FPGAs offer up to 75K logic cells, 3.1Mbits of block RAM, 132 dedicated DSP slices for massive parallel processing at 250MHz, and support memory access rates of up to 800Mbps using integrated memory controllers. The hard-coded memory controllers and increased memory capacity of these devices enable fast buffering of video frames for vision-based driver assistance, infotainment, and hybrid driver information systems.

XA Spartan-6 LXT FPGAs with embedded 3.125Gbps low-power serial transceivers and PCI Express® interface cores are ideal for chip-to-chip communications in automotive infotainment systems. The high-speed interface capabilities and high clock speeds of these devices are also well suited to the low-cost camera interfacing and processing performance requirements of driver assistance applications. Multiple high-bandwidth video links can be integrated on a single device using the new Automotive Pixel Link (APIX) core optimized for XA Spartan-6 FPGAs also announced separately today (see news release).

Infotainment Companion Chip Demonstration

The Xilinx Infotainment Companion Chip Targeted Design Platform demonstration highlights the flexibility of XA Spartan-6 FPGAs to support simple to complex companion chip architectures and accommodate automotive-specific requirements not addressed by many popular host processors. Specialized interfacing and high-speed processing tasks can be offloaded from the base processor to the FPGA for optimal system partitioning and maximum performance.

Pre-configured hardware and software building blocks, developed by long-time Xilinx Alliance member Xylon, accelerate system design with automotive-specific interfaces and peripherals, along with a wide range of IP for video capture and processing, graphics acceleration and display, and in-vehicle networking functions. The platform eases plug-and-play development with daughter cards, expansion slots for interface customization, and connections to various host processors through generic serial/parallel data ports, USB, and industry-standard PCIe® serial interfaces. The platform can be tailored for a broad range of application designs with minimal re-engineering.

Pricing & Availability

Shipments of select XA Spartan-6 FPGAs will commence in the second half of 2010. All devices can be ordered in a variety densities and packaging options. Details on pricing and delivery lead times are available through Xilinx sales representatives.

About Xilinx Automotive Solutions

Xilinx is the world’s leading supplier of programmable logic devices (PLDs) to the automotive industry with its complete line of FPGAs and CPLDs tested to the AEC-Q100 qualification standard and integrated platform solutions that accelerate development of in-vehicle infotainment and networking, driver information, and driver assistance applications. Xilinx automotive platforms go beyond silicon to include the LogiCORE™ and AllianceCORE IP portfolio, comprehensive design environment, and scalable development kits. For more information about Xilinx in automotive, visit: www.xilinx.com/automotive.

NUREMBERG, Germany, March 2 /PRNewswire/ — At Embedded World 2010 today, Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) introduced the Xilinx® Automotive (XA) family of Spartan®-6 field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) optimized for applications requiring high-speed connectivity and high-resolution video performance. These automotive-qualified devices provide the flexibility, scalability, and integration needed to reduce the system cost of automotive infotainment, driver assistance, driver information, and in-vehicle networking products.

XA Spartan-6 FPGAs also provide the silicon foundation for the Xilinx Infotainment Companion Chip Targeted Design Platform that will be introduced later this year. Automotive developers will be able to rapidly scale their infotainment designs with XA Spartan-6 FPGAs as companion chips to standard processors or application-specific standard products (ASSPs). Xilinx is showcasing a demonstration version of the new platform this week at Embedded World 2010, March 2nd through 4th in Nuremberg, Germany (Hall 12, Booth #12-515).

“Automotive developers today are being driven to enhance the user experience with next-generation infotainment, driver assistance and driver information applications. But, they must do so with fewer resources, tighter budgets, and shorter market windows,” said Harvey Steele, vice president, Automotive, Consumer and ISM Business at Xilinx. “XA Spartan-6 FPGAs address the technical challenge through a scalable architecture, increased connectivity options, and higher integration, delivered with industry-leading quality and value. With our targeted design platform approach, we’re also making it easier to develop with our new devices and reduce overall system cost.”

XA Spartan-6 FPGA Family

XA Spartan-6 FPGAs provide a cost-optimized mix of logic and integrated features with a range of density and package options that enable developers to scale designs across multiple vehicle platforms. XA Spartan-6 LX FPGAs offer up to 75K logic cells, 3.1Mbits of block RAM, 132 dedicated DSP slices for massive parallel processing at 250MHz, and support memory access rates of up to 800Mbps using integrated memory controllers. The hard-coded memory controllers and increased memory capacity of these devices enable fast buffering of video frames for vision-based driver assistance, infotainment, and hybrid driver information systems.

XA Spartan-6 LXT FPGAs with embedded 3.125Gbps low-power serial transceivers and PCI Express® interface cores are ideal for chip-to-chip communications in automotive infotainment systems. The high-speed interface capabilities and high clock speeds of these devices are also well suited to the low-cost camera interfacing and processing performance requirements of driver assistance applications. Multiple high-bandwidth video links can be integrated on a single device using the new Automotive Pixel Link (APIX) core optimized for XA Spartan-6 FPGAs also announced separately today (see news release).

Infotainment Companion Chip Demonstration

The Xilinx Infotainment Companion Chip Targeted Design Platform demonstration highlights the flexibility of XA Spartan-6 FPGAs to support simple to complex companion chip architectures and accommodate automotive-specific requirements not addressed by many popular host processors. Specialized interfacing and high-speed processing tasks can be offloaded from the base processor to the FPGA for optimal system partitioning and maximum performance.

Pre-configured hardware and software building blocks, developed by long-time Xilinx Alliance member Xylon, accelerate system design with automotive-specific interfaces and peripherals, along with a wide range of IP for video capture and processing, graphics acceleration and display, and in-vehicle networking functions. The platform eases plug-and-play development with daughter cards, expansion slots for interface customization, and connections to various host processors through generic serial/parallel data ports, USB, and industry-standard PCIe® serial interfaces. The platform can be tailored for a broad range of application designs with minimal re-engineering.

Pricing & Availability

Shipments of select XA Spartan-6 FPGAs will commence in the second half of 2010. All devices can be ordered in a variety densities and packaging options. Details on pricing and delivery lead times are available through Xilinx sales representatives.

About Xilinx Automotive Solutions

Xilinx is the world’s leading supplier of programmable logic devices (PLDs) to the automotive industry with its complete line of FPGAs and CPLDs tested to the AEC-Q100 qualification standard and integrated platform solutions that accelerate development of in-vehicle infotainment and networking, driver information, and driver assistance applications. Xilinx automotive platforms go beyond silicon to include the LogiCORE™ and AllianceCORE IP portfolio, comprehensive design environment, and scalable development kits. For more information about Xilinx in automotive, visit: www.xilinx.com/automotive.