Source: Impulse C
July 1, 2005

Impulse C™ Accelerates Applications in Xilinx Virtex 4™ 

Toolset moves software code to highly parallel FPGA hardware for acceleration

Kirkland, WA – July 1, 2005 – Impulse Accelerated Technologies™, Inc. today announced support for Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGAs in Version 2 of its CoDeveloper™ C-to-hardware design tool. CoDeveloper and the included Impulse C compiler make it possible for software programmers to create hardware-accelerated applications that can dramatically outperform applications running on traditional microprocessors. CoDeveloper for Xilinx Virtex-4 allows software programmers and experienced FPGA designers to:

• Describe parallel algorithms for image processing, DSP, encryption and other processing-intensive applications using standard C language.
• Use standard C development tools for algorithm verification and desktop simulation.
• Generate synthesizable hardware descriptions for selected C subroutines and processes.
• Identify processing bottlenecks and accelerate designs by optimizing the generated hardware for the selected Virtex-4 platform.
• Automatically generate the required Virtex-4 FPGA interfaces for software to hardware communications.

CoDeveloper gives software programmers device independent access to a wide range of FPGAs by allowing hardware accelerators to be compiled directly from C software descriptions. The Impulse C compiler translates specific C-language subroutines to low-level FPGA-hardware while optimizing the generated logic and identifying opportunities for parallelism and acceleration. The compiler analyzes untimed C code and collapses multiple C statements and operations into single-clock instruction stages. CoDeveloper can also unroll loops and generate loop pipelines to exploit the extreme levels of parallelism possible in an FPGA. Instrumentation and monitoring functions generate debugging visualizations for highly-parallel, multi-process applications, helping system designers identify dataflow bottlenecks and other areas for acceleration.

In the case of the Virtex-4, Impulse C is capable of generating the required software/hardware interfaces using the Auxiliary Processing Unit (APU) interface. The APU provides direct access to hardware accelerators from instructions executing in software on the embedded IBM™ PowerPC™ 405 CPU. Impulse CoDeveloper enhances the programming of this platform by providing C-to-hardware tools that generate APU peripherals directly accessible from the PowerPC. The generated interfaces and other support files are exported from CoDeveloper into the Xilinx Platform Studio™ tools or Synplicity ™ tools for mapping into the selected Virtex-4 device. Using this approach to hardware/software partitioning, speedups of 100X and more have been demonstrated for computationally-intensive PowerPC applications.

 “The Xilinx Virtex-4 provides a great platform for accelerating embedded applications,” stated David Pellerin, co-founder and CTO of Impulse. “By providing software programmers with a path from C code to FPGA hardware, we make it possible for embedded software applications to be accelerated dramatically, using familiar software design methods to target the Virtex-4 platform.”

Pricing and Availability

Impulse CoDeveloper for Xilinx Virtex-4 is available now, with prices starting at from $4,995 for a perpetual, single-user license. Annual and floating licenses are also available, as are “Universal” versions that include all supported FPGA vendors and device families. 30-day evaluations are free to qualified organizations and individuals. Visit www.ImpulseC.com for more information or contact info@ImpulseC.com.

About Impulse

Impulse Accelerated Technologies, founded in 2002, provides tools for software-to-hardware compilation and FPGA-based software/hardware codesign. Impulse provides CoDeveloper™, a design tool that delivers unprecedented ease-of-use for software programmers wanting to create hardware-accelerated systems. CoDeveloper and the included Impulse C™ compiler tools support the use of standard C development environments, including Microsoft® Visual Studio™ and open-source development tools, and generate synthesizable HDL outputs compatible with popular FPGA synthesis tools including those from Synplicity™, Altera™ and Xilinx™. CoDeveloper improves design productivity, reduces risk and uncertainty in mixed software/hardware systems, and shortens the overall design cycle for advanced embedded systems. Impulse products are easily incorporated into existing FPGA synthesis and software design flows.