Companies team up for Altera cores
-- EDN, January 18, 2001
Mentor Graphics has joined AMPP (Altera's Megafunction Partner Program). Under the program, Mentor will offer 20 Inventra commodity cores to Altera customers developing next-generation signal-processing, networking, bus-interface, and memory applications. The cores will be available as optimized netlists via the Web. Mentor Graphics' Inventra Intellectual Property Division will sell and support the cores, which you can download at www.mentor.com/inventra/netlist_program/altera_pld_program.
Altera AMPP partners offer reusable, synthesizable megafunctions for Altera PLDs. AMPP functions are HDL (hardware-description-language) design files of complex, system-level functions that Altera develops, pretests, documents, and endorses for use in Altera devices. Mentor Graphics offers risk-free core evaluation over the Web using FPGA Advantage.
Mentor is scheduling several Inventra IP (intellectual-property) cores for licensing and downloading. They include a USB 1.1 function controller for the M82801IDE ATA 5 IDE controller, a USB 2.0 function controller for the M16550A UART with FIFO, the M8051Warp 8-bit microcontroller for the M16C450 UART, an MI2C I2C bus interface, a T1/E1 framer, and an M12CV2 Enhanced I2C bus interface. Other available cores are a T1 deframer, an MPCMCIA1 PC card interface, a E1 deframer, an M8-2365SL PC card-interface controller, a single-channel HDLC (high-level data-link-control) controller, a four-channel M8237A DMA controller, a multichannel HDLC controller, an M82092IDE ATA 1 IDE controller, a Reed Solomon encoder, an M82371IDE ATA 4 IDE controller, and a Reed Solomon decoder. Mentor Graphics continues to offer these above cores in their original RTL format as well.
Altera, www.altera.com. at www.rscahners.ims.ca/ednmag.
Mentor Graphics, www.mentor.com.
-by Gabe Moretti
