Target Compiler Technologies Announces Key Design Wins and New Positioning

Design Automation Conference, Anaheim, June 10, 2008 – Target Compiler Technologies™, the leader in tools used for designing and programming application-specific processors (ASIPs), today announced several new design wins and also its new positioning.

With respect to positioning, Target Compiler Technologies has adopted the tag-line “The ASIP Company™“. The new positioning is intended to underscore the importance of the ASIP movement and of Target’s long-time leadership in this technology.

Gert Goossens, Target’s CEO, elaborates: “Advanced compiler technology is a crucial part of our overall product offering, but it didn’t conjure up the real purpose and value of our overall tool suite. Since our founding, we have been focused on enabling SoC designers to create IP blocks that provide unprecedented combinations of both efficiency and flexibility. Such blocks are commonly known as ASIPs (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIP). We believe our tools have been used to design more ASIP-based SoCs (in production) than any other tool suite out there. It seemed only logical to differentiate ourselves more strongly from traditional compiler vendors, and associate ourselves more strongly with ‘ASIPs’.”

Johan Van Ginderdeuren, business development manager for ultra-low power solutions at NXP Semiconductors, agrees. “We have been using Target’s ASIP design tools since 2002, in multiple projects and in different application domains including the creation of various targeted versions of our licensable ultra low power CoolFlux DSP core. At this point, we consider that Target’s tools are a key part of our design capabilities – enabling us to implement our algorithms in silicon via ASIPs as easily as, but much more efficiently than on a merchant processor or in fixed-function RTL. The capabilities of Target’s tools stand alone in this market. Target clearly is the thought leader in this discipline.”

Target’s new positioning is backed by the launch of a renewed corporate website (www.retarget.com), and by a name change for its major products. Target’s tool-suite for the design of ASIP architectures, previously known as “Chess/Checkers”, is henceforth called “IP Designer™”. Target’s product-line of software development kits for new and existing ASIP architectures, previously known as “Checkmate”, is henceforth called “IP Programmer™”.

Jeroen De Lille, Target’s Vice-President of Sales and Marketing, commented: “Our new product names underscore the key value proposition of our technology, namely to enable our customers to design their own differentiating intellectual property in the form of ASIPs. Different from the solutions of configurable IP vendors, our customers own the IP cores that they create using our tools. We believe such a business model is right for ASIPs, as our customers define their own architectural differentiation based on their proprietary knowledge of the application domain.”

Beyond the new positioning, Target also announced several new customer wins – many in North America. ETRI (Korea), Sensata Technologies (Cambridge, MA, USA), Silicon Laboratories (Austin, TX, USA), and Sound Design Technologies (Burlington, ON, Canada) all have adopted Target’s IP Designer tool suite. (See related press releases at www.retarget.com)

Gert Goossens comments: “We have certainly seen an increase in ASIP related activity over the past few years. These design wins show that there are multiple industry segments that see a benefit in product differentiation based on efficient programmability. In particular, our expansion into the North American market seems to have been well timed with the growing popularity of ASIP design.”

Target’s ASIP (Application-Specific Processor) design tools are used by engineers to design, optimize and program customized processor cores. They are used all the way from architectural exploration through to implementation and verification. ASIPs are primarily used in one of two ways. First, they are used to provide greater algorithmic/computational efficiency (measured as performance/$/watt) than solutions built on standard embedded processors. Second, they are used to provide post-silicon flexibility (through programmability) to designs that might otherwise be built in hard-coded RTL. Both uses are becoming increasingly commonplace in today’s SoC and FPGA designs.

About Target Compiler Technologies

Target Compiler Technologies (www.retarget.com) is the leading provider of retargetable software tools to accelerate the design, programming and verification of application-specific processor cores (ASIPs). Target's IP Designer tool suite has been applied by customers worldwide for diverse application domains, including GSM, WCDMA and HSDPA handsets, VoIP, audio coding, automotive infotainment, ADSL and VDSL modems, wireless LAN, hearing instruments, mobile image processing, video processing, and various control and interfacing applications. Target is a spin-off of IMEC, is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, with North American operations in Boulder, Colorado.