San Jose, CA; Microprocessor Forum — (press release excerpt) — Altera Corporation today began production shipments of the first member of its ARM-based Excalibur embedded processor family. With today's announcement, Altera customers have access to the first general-purpose chip that combines programmable logic and… a high-performance ARM9T processor core.

Based on the most widely adopted embedded RISC architecture, the Excalibur ARM-based family of embedded processor PLDs provides single chip-integration of a high-performance 200 MHz ARM922T processor core, programmable logic, on-chip memory, and key peripherals. This integration of leading edge technology provides embedded system designers a reduction in overall development cost and accelerated time-to-market versus ASIC solutions. The integration also affords performance and board space advantages over conventional designs that use multiple discrete components. Altera said its first device, the EPXA10 device, is in full production now, and the remaining two ARM-based devices will be shipping over the next two quarters.

Altera is also bringing together industry leaders that offer operating system, embedded software design and EDA tools support for Excalibur ARM and Nios embedded processor solutions. Called the Excalibur Partner Program, founding members include Agilent Technologies with their trace debug solution, Mentor Graphics with their X-Ray debugger support, and Red Hat, Inc. with Linux OS support for the Excalibur ARM product.

 
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