StarGen Announces Availability of ASI Endpoint Core for Xilinx FPGA; Allows System OEMs Flexibility to Integrate Advanced Switching Interconnect Technology with Their Unique IP in Industry Leading FPGAs
SAN FRANCISCO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—March 7, 2006—
StarGen, the market leader in Advanced Switching
Interconnect (ASI) solutions, announced general availability of FPGA
core IP that provides ASI endpoint functionality to application
specific silicon. This highly efficient core is currently targeted to
Xilinx Virtex 4-FX series FPGAs. Subsequent releases will support
additional platforms including Altera products. Design documentation
for both platforms is available now.
System OEMs in storage, application server, embedded, and
communication markets often require cost effective FPGAs in their
designs to implement proprietary functionality that performs better
and more economically than standard processors or high cost ASICs.
With the advent of merchant PCI Express and Advanced Switching
Interconnect fabrics, the market has demanded proven FPGA cores that
implement the advanced data movement features of these standards and
provide seamless connectivity with market leading IC implementations.
StarGen's FPGA ASI core is highly optimized to require the minimum
amount of slices and provides FPGA designers with the maximum amount
of headroom for their application needs. While the StarGen core is
highly customizable, the base implementation only requires 7000
slices. By comparison, published specifications of other FPGA cores
that support only PCI Express-Base functionality consume 5,500 slices.
In addition, the core is designed to be used with the Xilinx Rocket IO
PCIe physical layer transceivers, for guaranteed performance and
inter-operability.
"As the industry continues to embrace industry standard
interconnects, OEMs demand cost effective interfaces that they can
quickly integrate into their designs with confidence in
interoperability and implementation quality," said Steve Christo,
Director of Strategic Marketing at StarGen. "Our early customers have
told us that since the FPGA core is based on an actual ASIC
implementation of StarGen's Kestrel(TM) PCIe to ASI Bridge, they have
high confidence in implementing the ASI core into their platform."
Customers implementing the ASI core receive the following:
-- ASI Endpoint IP that is fully compliant with the PCIe and ASI
specifications and implements the Simple Load Store (SLS) data
movement model
-- RTL that is supported in ModelTech and Synopsys simulation
environments
-- Full Test Bench with Verilog interface to the user interface
-- Xilinx netlist targeted to Virtex 4-FX series
-- All timing constraint files
-- PowerPC firmware to support ASI event services that is user
extensible for adding application specific registers
Availability and Pricing
The ASI core is available now. Pricing starts at $30,000 with
optional design services and extended support available.
About Advanced Switching
Advanced Switching is an important new interconnect technology,
collaboratively developed by the ASI-SIG, an industry organization
with over 60 member companies from the semiconductor, systems
equipment, and test and measurement industries. ASI is finding initial
applications in the system architectures of bladed compute servers,
enterprise storage and embedded applications. Advanced Switching is
totally compatible with PCI Express and extends its tree interconnect
model to a switch fabric topology incorporating the best features of
high performance proprietary architectures with the economics and
infrastructure of volume, off-the-shelf, semiconductor components.
About StarGen
StarGen, based in Marlborough, MA, is a fabless semiconductor
company providing high-performance interconnect solutions for compute
and communication markets. StarGen's AXSys product line is based on
the Advanced Switching Interconnect and PCI Express standards and
targets system OEMs developing platforms for compute, storage and
communication applications. StarGen's successful 1st generation
product, StarFabric, extends legacy PCI applications and is currently
in use in over 75 designs with greater than 250,000 ports shipped
around the world. Additional company and product information is
available at www.stargen.com.
Note to editors: PCI Express is a trademark of the PCI-SIG.
Advanced Switching Interconnect and ASI are trademarks of the ASI-SIG.
StarFabric and AXSys are trademarks of StarGen. All other trademarks
are the property of their respective owners.
Contact:
StarGen
Pat Hart, 508-786-9950 x112
Email Contact
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