TASKING CARMEL Tool Suite Offers Developers SoC Capabilities and Low-Level Memory Control

Enhanced EDE simplifies development through new project management capabilities

Dedham, MA, February 7, 2001 — TASKING, The Embedded Communications Company, announced the immediate availability of a new release of its tool suite for the Infineon CARMELTM DSP core, which simplifies the development of next-generation wireless and telecommunications solutions. The CARMEL Tool Suite, V3.0r2, complete with upgraded EDE, optimized C compiler, CrossView Pro debugger and on-chip debug support, introduces superior memory control, multiple fast floating-point formats and integrated configurable instructions that take advantage of the CARMEL PowerPlugTM technology. These capabilities enable system designers to accelerate the execution of application-specific functions, boosting DSP performance through reconfiguration of the DSP core. By integrating these optimizations into an enhanced development environment with advanced project management capabilities, TASKING delivers the type of robust solution needed to develop advanced communications systems for next-generation wireless, tele/datacommunications or multimedia and consumer applications on time and within budget.

Recognizing the need for design integration and control, TASKING optimized the CARMEL tool suite with capabilities that maximize the architectural strengths of the CARMEL DSP. To more efficiently use memory, TASKING created four additional memory spaces that can be allocated dynamically at run time. This additional memory control, along with a new fast floating-point format and support of the IEEE-754 floating-point format, allows the compiler to optimize loops and exploit the parallel execution capabilities of the CARMEL DSP. With up to four PowerPlug modules connected to the CARMEL DSP core, SoC developers achieve further speed gain for computationally intensive applications that cannot compromise power dissipation or system cost by reconfiguring the instruction set to extend the functionality of the core with application-specific modules. The additional processing power gained through these optimizations delivers the sophisticated functionality that provides faster data transfer rates required by the convergence of voice, data and video over wireless and broadband applications.

"The number of DSP-based devices continues to grow tremendously, bringing a wide-spread need for easy-to-use DSP software development tools," notes Alex Bedarida, Vice President of DSP in the Cores and Modules Group of Infineon Technologies. "In the past, squeezing the best performance out of a DSP has often involved laborious hand-preening of code. With this tool suite, TASKING alleviates this problem, delivering high-level functionality with an intuitive, user-friendly environment that speeds development."

"The CARMEL Tool Suite extends the reach of TASKING's DSP offerings, opening up embedded communications markets ranging from next-generation wireless to consumer electronics," points out Brian Mulcahey, TASKING's Vice President of Worldwide Corporate Marketing. "Our close relationship with Infineon enables TASKING to maximize the use of architectural innovations of CARMEL, a DSP known for its high performance and efficient MIPS capabilities. This relationship, along with feedback we have received from our large DSP licensing base, has played a significant role in TASKING creating a tool suite fine-tuned to the needs of DSP developers and the rigors of the marketplace."

To reduce time-to-market, the CARMEL Tool Suite, which supports both CARMEL 10xx and 20xx architectures, includes many ease-of-use capabilities and gives managers the ability to organize large, complex projects through new grouping functions and management tools. By integrating graphical browsing into all aspects of the tool suite, TASKING enables developers to quickly review source code, reducing the learning curve and speeding the debugging process. Using tag files, developers can identify cross references throughout the applications, and through templates and snippets, developers can outline code structure and reinsert parts of a routine that are used continuously.

Improved graphing capabilities incorporated into TASKING's CrossView Pro debugger offer enhanced user-defined capabilities, enabling the developer to resolve complex application problems with greater ease. By integrating these strengths with version control and a clear outline of file dependencies, TASKING delivers the resources needed to complete a rapid edit-compile-debug process on the complex embedded communications application.

Availability:

The TASKING CARMEL Tool Suite, V3.0r2 is available now on MS-Windows 95/98/NT and Sun/Solaris platforms. CARMEL customers with an active maintenance contract may upgrade to this release free of charge. A demo version of the Tool Suite is available from www.tasking.com/support/CARMEL or on CD-ROM from any of the TASKING offices or distributors. Release notes and manual files can be downloaded from the technical support area at www.tasking.com/support/CARMEL.

About TASKING

TASKING, The Embedded Communications Company, brings together the software technology needed to compete in the embedded communications era. TASKING's award-winning integrated development environment, compiler, debugger, embedded Internet and RTOS offerings support a wide range of DSPs and 8-, 16- and 32-bit microprocessors and microcontrollers for all areas of embedded communications. TASKING, founded in 1974, is a privately held company with headquarters in Dedham, Massachusetts, and engineering, sales and support offices in California, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK. TASKING's 100,000 licensed users include the world's leading telecom, datacom, wireless and peripheral manufacturers. More information about TASKING can be found at www.tasking.com and www.embeddedcommunications.com.

TASKING, the TASKING logo, and The Embedded Communications Company are trademarks of TASKING. All other trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.