DEVELOPER TOOLS

Mercury Computer Systems, announced today it has joined Xilinx Corporation in membership to the Open Core Protocol International Partnership (OCP-IP), to help evolve the standard in support of FPGA-based system designs. The OCP-IP is dedicated to proliferating a common standard for intellectual property (IP) core interfaces, or sockets, which facilitate "plug and play" System-on-Chip (SoC) design. Formed in 2001, OCP-IP is a non-profit corporation that facilitates IP core reusability and reduces design time, risk, and manufacturing costs for SoC designs. Historically, customers who wish to interconnect IP cores have been burdened with the creation and maintenance of proprietary hardware APIs (application programming interfaces) to support the connection. Adherence to the standard interfaces defined by OCP is expected to enable Mercury customers to seamlessly integrate Xilinx and other third-party IP cores into their FPGA designs, with particular emphasis on reuse and verification. OCP-IP interfaces add value by providing a platform that brings together a wide range of applications and architectures. Mercury and Xilinx intend to extend this proven technology, which has already been used extensively in the ASIC/SoC space, to their FPGA customers. For more information on OCP-IP, visit its Web site.