Altium Designer makes it fast and easy for engineers to develop and debug FPGA-based systems using soft processor cores implemented inside a programmable device using an interactive design methodology called LiveDesign. Now, with the recent release of Altium Designer 6.0, LiveDesign is extended to the development of systems that use a discrete processor, such as the ARM720T™ processor-based Sharp® BlueStreak™ LH79520, connected to an FPGA. This speeds the development of ARM processor systems by allowing engineers to utilize the programmable resources of an FPGA to extend processor functionality and easily implement system components and logic.

Altium Designer 6.0 includes a full software tool chain for ARM technology-based processors that supports the ARM7™, ARM9™, ARM9E™ and ARM10E™ processor families. The software development tools are based on Altium's advanced Viper compiler technology, which is used across all processors supported by the Altium Designer system. This provides full C-code compatibility between processors, and produces fast, highly optimized object code. Initial benchmarking indicates that the Viper-based ARM compiler, included as a standard with Altium Designer 6.0, provides performance comparable with leading stand-alone professional compiler solutions. This gives Altium Designer customers the highest quality ARM code generation capabilities as part of their unified development environment.

"ARM technology-based processors are extensively used in a diverse range of applications from wireless, networking and consumer entertainment solutions to imaging, automotive, security and storage devices," commented Nick Martin, founder and CEO, Altium. "The provision of ARM support in Altium Designer brings new possibilities to designers of ARM Powered® devices in all these industries."

At the hardware level, Altium Designer 6.0 includes a special FPGA-based 'wrapper' core that allows designers to easily target Sharp's BlueStreak LH79520 ARM720T core-based processor. The wrapper provides hardware-level design compatibility with Altium Designer's native cross-device 32-bit soft processor -- the TSK3000, and allows designers to easily switch between the TSK3000 and a discrete LH79520 processor with only minimal modification to the hardware design. It allows engineers using the BlueStreak to take advantage of Altium Designer's range of included FPGA-based peripherals by providing a Wishbone OpenBus connection with the processor, and facilitates full source-level code debugging. The wrapper core also allows the use of Altium Designer's FPGA-based virtual instruments for interactive hardware debugging -- LiveDesign. Similar wrapper cores are included to support the hard PowerPC® available with Xilinx® Virtex®-2 Pro FPGAs, the Xilinx MicroBlaze™ soft processor, and discrete PowerPC processors.

The LH79520 is the first in a number of ARM technology-based and other additional processor wrappers that will be introduced into Altium Designer to support the easy targeting of a wide range of third-party processors.

"This addition to Sharp's line of support tools for its BlueStreak processors demonstrates our commitment to providing engineers with integrated comprehensive solutions that facilitate the electronics design and development process," says Scott Robertson, Senior Manager, Systems and Software Engineering of Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas. "Recognizing the growing demand for advanced FPGA systems, Altium Designer's unified design/development platform supports the Sharp LH79520's integration in these complex designs. Additionally, Altium's global distribution network will allow Sharp customers in all markets to benefit -- speeding time to market and lowering development costs."

The provision of both hardware and software compatibility between processors means designers can easily migrate designs between execution platforms. They can, for example, use the TSK3000 for initial device-independent system development wholly within an FPGA device, and then switch to the LH79520 discrete processor at the prototype stage to take advantage of the high performance of these devices.

"Large-scale programmable devices such as today's FPGAs are changing the way engineers think about electronic product development," Nick Martin continued. "With Altium Designer 6.0 we've extended the reach of Altium Designer and its LiveDesign methodology to systems using discrete processors. This allows our customers to easily migrate designs from soft processors, and take advantage of the high performance available with devices like the Sharp BlueStreak."

To support the development of ARM technology-based systems, Altium will be releasing a new daughterboard for its unique NanoBoard LiveDesign development board that features a Sharp BlueStreak LH79520 MCU coupled to a Xilinx Spartan™-3 FPGA. The NanoBoard is a versatile 'nano-level breadboard' that integrates with Altium Designer to provide a full LiveDesign implementation and interactive debugging environment for FPGA-based system design. The NanoBoard features swappable daughter boards that house the target programmable devices and other resources, allowing development for multiple FPGA and processors architectures on the same basic platform. Release timing for the new daughterboard will be announced shortly.

About Altium Limited

Altium Limited (ASX: ALU) is a global developer and supplier of electronics design software for the Microsoft Windows environment. Founded in 1985, Altium released the world's first Microsoft Windows-based printed circuit board design tool in 1991, and continues to provide advanced, easy-to-use and affordable software design tools for complete electronic product development to electronics engineers, designers, and developers worldwide. Altium is headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with sales and support offices in Australia, the United States, Japan, China and Europe -- and maintains a large reseller network in all other major markets. For more information please visit www.altium.com.

About Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas

Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas, Camas, Washington, is a U.S.-based company and a division of Sharp Electronics Corporation, which is a subsidiary of Sharp Corporation, Osaka, Japan. Sharp is a worldwide developer of core digital technologies that are playing an integral role in shaping the next generation of electronic products for consumer and business needs. Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas offers breakthrough memory, LCD, optoelectronics, CCD, RF/IR, microcomputer and system-on-chip components, along with packaging and integration skills that help design engineers throughout North and South America bring their ambitious ideas to market. Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas is dedicated to improving people's lives through the use of advanced technology and a commitment to innovation, quality, value and design. For more information visit www.sharpsma.com.

Altium, Altium Designer, Board Insight, CAMtastic, CircuitStudio, Design Explorer, DXP, LiveDesign, NanoBoard, NanoTalk, Nexar, nVisage, P-CAD, Protel, Situs, TASKING, and Topological Autorouting and their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Altium Limited or its subsidiaries. 'PowerPC' is a registered trademark of IBM Corp. 'Sharp' and 'BlueStreak' are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sharp Electronics Corp. 'Xilinx,' 'MicroBlaze,' 'Spartan' and 'Virtex' are trademarks or registered trademarks of Xilinx, Inc. All other registered or unregistered trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners, and no trademark rights to the same are claimed.

ARM and ARM Powered are registered trademarks of ARM Limited. ARM7, ARM720T, ARM9, ARM9E and ARM10E are trademarks of ARM Limited. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. "ARM" is used to represent ARM Holdings plc; its operating company ARM Limited; and the regional subsidiaries ARM INC.; ARM KK; ARM Korea Ltd.; ARM Taiwan; ARM France SAS; ARM Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd.; ARM Belgium N.V.; AXYS Design Automation Inc.; AXYS GmbH; ARM Embedded Technologies Pvt. Ltd.; and ARM Physical IP, Inc.

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