Hong Kong designers to put IP on CAP

ASTR will support clients in transforming their design specifications into netlists for the metal programmable portion of the AT91CAP customisable microcontroller.

Atmel is working with the Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) to develop designs based on its CAP customisable ARM microcontroller with ASTRI's IP blocks and software.

The initiative is in the context of ASTRI's established Low-power MCU Design Platform project that aims to lower the technical entry barriers for companies undertaking microcontroller-based system-on-chip designs for specific applications.

Under the terms of the agreement, ASTRI, incorporating IP blocks from its extensive libraries, will support clients in transforming their design specifications into netlists for the metal programmable portion of the AT91CAP customisable microcontroller, the netlists will be validated on the AT91CAP emulation board by mapping them onto the built-in FPGA, before being transferred to Atmel for placement and routing, and metal programming of the AT91CAP platform.

ASTRI will perform post-layout simulation prior to customer signoff for fabrication.

Michel Le Lan, Atmel's Marketing Director for ASIC products, commented: "We are privileged to be working together with a prestigious applied research institution like ASTRI to help our customers adopt leading-edge system-on-chip technology, in the world's fastest-growing region for electronic systems".

"ASTRI's world-class design expertise, rich library of IP blocks and software support will help our clients to get their applications to market quickly and at reasonable cost".

Raymond Chiu, ASTRI's Vice President and R and D Director of IC Designs Group, commented: "With Asia Pacific especially China fast becoming the world's major electronics system producer and consumer, system-on-chip solutions were needed to fuel the growth".

"Microcontroller solutions with a rich library of IP and fast cycle time integration and verification platform as provided by Atmel's CAP customisable microcontroller solution is critical to achieve time to market for such system-on-chip solutions".

"It is our honour to partner with Atmel to bring such technology into the region to serve the needs of our mutual customers".

Atmel's CAP is an ARM microcontroller-based system-on-chip with fast local memory, a wide range of industry-standard peripherals and interfaces, and a metal programmable (MP) block that allows the designer to add custom logic.

By combining the performance, density and low power consumption of the fixed portion of the device with the flexibility of the MP block, CAP enables application-specific products to be developed in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of standard-cell ASICs, but at a unit price close to that of standard cell devices.

CAP also offers superior performance, smaller form factor and lower power consumption at a unit price significantly lower than an MCU-plus-FPGA combination for the same functionality.

CAP is fully supported with an emulation board, software development tools, operating systems, code modules and a worldwide network of expert design centres to facilitate application software development.

The CAP MP Block can be personalised with IP developed by the customer, by third-party design centres or from Atmel's extensive libraries.

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