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Xilinx bundles Ethernet, FPU as no-cost IP

Embedded processing IP peripherals included in embedded development kit

Xilinx has enlarged its range of “no-fee” intellectual property (IP) cores for embedded processing systems that you design with its platform FPGAs. The 10/100 Ethernet MAC Lite, single precision floating-point unit, industry standard UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter) 16450/16550 controller and IIC (Inter-Integrated Circuit) interface IP cores now incur no licensing charges. In its Embedded Development Kit (EDK), Xilinx has ported the four IP cores to the enhanced on-chip CoreConnect bus structure, the Processor Local Bus version 4.6 (PLB46) that the company introduced in November 2007, for designs using the MicroBlaze soft processor and the PowerPC processor embedded in the Virtex family of FPGAs. Xilinx says that the EDK now includes over 40 cores for licensing at no charge: the catalgo includes cores for which a licensing fee applies, such as a Tri-Mode Ethernet MAC, USB2, CAN (Controller Area Network), and the FlexRay controller.
The EDK itself, version 9.2, costs $495, and includes the MicroBlaze v7 processor core with optional memory management unit (MMU), Xilinx Platform Studio (XPS) 9.2 tool suite, software drivers, documentation, and reference design examples.