"Through our TASKING products, we have distilled more than 25 years' experience in building highly-optimized C compilers into our Viper technology," said Nick Martin, Founder and CEO of Altium Limited. "This has allowed us to take C compilation to the next level and provide embedded software developers with real and practical access to concurrent hardware implementation using FPGAs without the need for RTL/hardware design expertise."

The initial application of this next-generation compiler technology, to be demonstrated at ESC, will allow embedded engineers using the Altium Designer unified electronic product development system to accelerate applications by automatically and transparently offloading selected C functions from the processor into hardware. The system automatically generates hardware within an FPGA to execute the selected functions, and compiles the remaining software to automatically make use of that hardware. The unified compiler technology, combined with Altium Designer's hardware- and software-level portability between processors, allows developers to make crucial architectural decisions later in the design process, after the application requirements are more specifically known.

Moving selected functions to concurrent hardware in FPGAs also alleviates the need to employ a higher performance processor or run the system at high clock speeds in order to achieve better performance. Execution speed can be improved by transparently offloading processor-intensive functions into dedicated hardware. This reduces the need to move to a faster and more expensive processor, which also has the benefit of reducing complications in PCB design necessary to cope with the speed increase at the board level.

Because the system uses standard ANSI/ISO C, it allows all software developers to harness the benefits that programmable hardware can bring to the design process without the need for them to have RTL or board-level hardware design expertise. Software developers can use their existing skills to manipulate the hardware platform on which their software runs and use hardware as needed to accelerate application performance.

"The emergence of high-capacity FPGAs at low cost has the potential to allow developers to leave open system architecture decisions until later in the design cycle when the functional needs are much better understood," commented Nick Martin. "Altium Designer unifies hardware and software design to allow all engineers, designers and developers to harness this potential and take a new approach to development that gives them complete freedom to experiment with different implementation paths throughout the development cycle."

One of the major benefits that this unified compiler technology brings to Altium Designer is that it allows developers to quickly and easily try out various code implementation options without the need to manually re-engineer the system hardware, or sacrifice portability by moving functions to assembly code. Developers simply select the functions within their ANSI/ISO C code they want implemented in hardware. The application can then be reprocessed within Altium Designer and downloaded to a suitable FPGA development board for testing and debug.

Altium's NanoBoard, a versatile nano-level breadboard featuring a unique 'plug-in' architecture that supports the swapping of target devices and peripheral sets, has been specifically developed to allow engineers to fully exploit the design freedom allowed by Altium Designer. It enables engineers to interactively debug both hardware and software and quickly modify the development environment to support the implementation path being explored. Altium's next generation FPGA-based development board -- the NanoBoard-NB2 -- is also being previewed at ESC.

Altium Designer's unified environment makes it easy for designers to move between different processor architectures, and between different execution platforms -- soft processor, discrete processor or hybrid processor immersed within an FPGA. The new unified hardware/software compiler technology will make it just as easy for engineers to try out different software and hardware implementation paths for their code. This brings unprecedented freedom to the design process, allows greater experimentation, speeds system development and allows more 'intelligence' to be added to products by fully harnessing the potential of today's programmable devices.

About Altium Designer

Altium Designer is the only unified electronic product development system that allows engineers to take a design from concept to completion in a single application. Altium Designer unifies:

--  Board-level design and PCB layout
--  Manufacturing file editing and verification
--  Component information management
--  Device- and vendor-independent programmable logic design
--  Embedded development for FPGA-based systems using soft and discrete
    processors
--  Project data & document management
    

Altium Designer eliminates the need to purchase and integrate numerous add-ons at extra cost in order to increase functionality or make up a complete solution.

Pricing and availability

The unified hardware/software compiler technology will be available in Altium Designer 6.0 as part of a software update scheduled for release later in the quarter. Altium Designer 6.0 is available for purchase through Altium's sales and support centers worldwide. For information on pricing and flexible product licensing options, customers should contact their local Altium sales and support center. Details can be found at www.altium.com/contacts.

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 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.

Altium, Altium Designer, LiveDesign, NanoBoard, Viper and their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Altium Limited or its subsidiaries. All other registered or unregistered trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners, and no trademark rights to the same are claimed.

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