Actel said that it has extended Core8051s processor support for its line of Axcelerator, radiation-tolerant Rtax and low-power Igloo FPGAs.
Broadnening Core8051s support enables designers to develop space-flight or portable embedded designs to take advantage of the ecosystem and deep code base that exists for 8051-based processors while leveraging the flexibility advantages delivered by PGAs, the company claims.
According to Actel, the Core8051s processor is an ASM51-compatible 8-bit microcontroller core that runs programs written for the industry standard 8051. The external SFR interface normally present on 8051 microcontrollers is replaced in Core8051s by a peripheral bus v3.0 interface. The Core8051 enables designers to instantiate the main 8051 core logic in Actel FPGA fabric while the APB v3.0 bus interface allows them to connect any APB IP peripherals.
The company said that designers can customise their design with only the peripheral functions such as timers, UARTs, I/O ports, required for their application, optimising area and freeing FPGA fabric for additional custom digital circuitry.
The processor includes features such as 8-bit microcontroller, 1 clock per instruction, ASM51 (8051, 8031, 80C51) compatible, can be used with existing 8051 tools and code, has APB bus peripheral interface, optional MUL, DIV, DA instructions and OCI debug block. It continues to support low-power ProASIC3 and Actel Fusion mixed-signal FPGA families, Actel said.
