Press Release
INICORE Offers First Fully Programmable DSP Core in GateField ProASIC Technology
Fremont, Calif. USA and Bruegg, Switzerland, May 18, 1998 — GateField™ Corporation and INICORE AG today announced that INICORE’s iniDSP™ core, a fully programmable Digital Signal Processor (DSP), is now available in GateField's flash-based, high-density reprogrammable ProASIC™ technology. Implemented in a GF250F100 ProASIC device, the iniDSP core was presented as the central function of dspfactory Inc.’s Soundmaster™ system - a software programmable DSP platform for second generation hearing aid developments - at the American Academy of Audiology convention in Los Angeles, early in April 1998.
GateField’s support for the industry standard ASIC design flow allowed INICORE to use their existing design environment to accomplish a rapid ProASIC implementation of their DSP core without having to learn new design tools or any ProASIC technology specific methodologies. "GateField’s products deliver in an efficient way the functional results of individual cores and combination of customer logic with cores," commented Peter Steiner, president and CEO of INICORE. "High density combined with predictable results is a key factor in today’s competitive system design approach. Our 35,000-gate iniDSP solution – including customer specific logic – was implemented within a couple of days. The large capacity of GateField’s ProASIC devices allowed us to prototype the system on a single chip, simplifying design and reducing verification costs."
"INICORE’s DSP implementation is an excellent example that validates the system level design compatibility of our ProASIC technology," said Peter Feist, GateField’s vice president of marketing. "High density and high performance architectures are important factors for system integration in programmable devices. But the key to design productivity and success is a programmable architecture, that blends itself seamlessly into a customer’s hardware/software system design environment, and therefore enables design reuse of third party IP (Intellectual Property) blocks with area efficient and predictable results. GateField’s reprogrammable ProASIC technology comprises all these attributes, qualifying it again as an ideal integration platform for IP and programmable system implementations."
The iniDSP core is based on Clarkspur Inc.’s CD2450A architecture. INICORE AG has licensed this technology and has developed a technology independent, structured high level model. Optimized and enhanced for high performance, lowest power and efficient algorithm programming, the iniDSP is an alternative to off-chip DSPs and existing technology dependent solutions. Embedded applications range from lowest power solutions like hearing aids, signal conditioning in sensors, over mid range audio applications (i.e. compression) to powerful controlling circuits, i.e. motor control.