ARM Discloses Technical Details Of Extendible PrimeXsys Wireless Platform

CAMBRIDGE, UK - Oct. 17, 2001 - ARM [(LSE: ARM); (Nasdaq: ARMHY)], the industry's leading provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC processor solutions, today released technical details of the ARM® PrimeXsys[tm] Wireless Platform. ARM will give a presentation at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose, Calif., today detailing the specific technology included in the PrimeXsys Wireless Platform.

The ARM PrimeXsys Wireless Platform was originally announced at the Embedded Systems Conference in Boston, Mass., in September 2001. The product deliverables include RTL, simulation models, development tools, firmware, OS ports, validation suites and methodologies. This provides the foundation functionality for support of base platform operating system execution and provides interfaces for the inclusion of additional functionality for the development of complete designs. System modelling is also supported to accelerate the development of entire system solutions.

"The PrimeXsys Wireless Platform provides the fundamental foundations for advancing the start point for complex system-on-chip (SoC) system developments," said Simon Watt, senior solutions architect, ARM. "With the PrimeXsys Wireless Platform, we have built a pre-validated platform that provides all of the necessary blocks to enable silicon manufacturers to add their own intellectual property (IP) and expertise to create differentiated, leading-edge mobile communications products."

The strategy with the PrimeXsys platform development has been to maximize compatibility over a range of operating systems. This approach has been designed to benefit the entire ARM community including OS vendors, OEMs and ARM's Partners and is intended to complement the complete systems solutions already available, including OMAP from TI, MSP 1000 from Qualcomm and PCA from Intel.

The PrimeXsys Wireless Platform has already been licensed by ST Microelectronics, and ARM is actively engaged with other companies. The ARM PrimeXsys Wireless Platform is built around the ARM926EJ-S[tm] microprocessor core and incorporates an ARM MOVE[tm] co-processor, PrimeCell® peripherals, an AMBA® Multi-layer AHB system interconnect and a wide range of OS ports including Linux, Palm OS, Symbian OS and Windows CE. ARM is also working closely with additional hardware and software developers to ensure that their IP is available for the PrimeXsys platforms.

The PrimeXsys Wireless Platform has been designed around an AMBA multi-layer AHB backbone, which provides greater interconnect-bandwidth in the system and lowers system latencies. This also allows the SD-RAM bandwidth to be exploited by other masters in the system while the core is performing accesses to peripherals, or to static memory.

A crucial part of the PrimeXsys Wireless Platform is the tools support and validation methodology it employs. The validation methodology within the consists of:

• AMBA-Compliance Testbench for demonstrating that individual RTL blocks are consistent with the AMBA interconnect specification
• Extendible Integration Validation Testbench to ensure that the system has been 'wired-up' correctly
• Extendible Subsystem Validation Testbench for ensuring that the system runs in the set way
• Extendible Software Development Model for integrating device drivers, OS ports and application software with models of the hardware
• Extendible IP Development board for testing on silicon

Availability
The PrimeXsys Wireless Platform is available now from ARM. It is being licensed under ARM's normal IP model for implementation within an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or application specific standard product (ASSP) design. The first PrimeXsys Wireless Platform samples will be available from key ARM Partners in 1H, 02. For more information please visit the ARM website on http://www.arm.com/armtech/PrimeXsys/ or email info@arm.com

About ARM
ARM is the industry's leading provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC microprocessor solutions. The company licenses its high-performance, low-cost, power-efficient RISC processors, peripherals, and system-on-chip designs to leading international electronics companies. ARM also provides comprehensive support required in developing a complete system. ARM's microprocessor cores are rapidly becoming the volume RISC standard in such markets as portable communications, handheld computing, multimedia, digital consumer and embedded solutions. More information on ARM is available at http://www.arm.com.