Freescale & Altera Partner

AUSTIN, Texas and SAN JOSE, Calif. -- To address the market need for highly custom semiconductor solutions, Freescale is introducing the first field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation of the 32-bit V1 ColdFire® core on the Altera® Cyclone® III family of FPGAs. IPextreme, a semiconductor intellectual property (IP) licensing specialist, will license the V1 core to Cyclone III customers free of charge through its online Core Store™ marketplace.

The V1 ColdFire core license provides a flexible, cost-effective solution for engineers whose design challenges cannot be addressed by standard embedded processors and system-on-chip (SOC) devices. For example, an engineer may require additional custom logic or extra communications channels to complement what is available on a standard product. The V1 core is delivered as an Altera SOPC Builder-compatible core, making it very easy for hardware engineers to create system designs quickly by leveraging other SOPC Builder peripherals.

“The marriage of the V1 core and FPGAs gives embedded developers the best of both worlds – being able to add product differentiation without giving up a familiar, proven processor core and the ecosystem that supports that processor core,” said Aiden Mitchell, consumer and industrial product manager for Freescale’s Microcontroller Solutions Group. “Industry-leading software and tools are a critical part of the selection of a 32-bit core for use in an FPGA. With this V1 core licensing arrangement, Freescale’s ColdFire architecture brings more than 15 years of partnerships and software support to the FPGA market.”

Freescale Semiconductor Inc.