[LLVMdev] TTA-Based Codesign Environment (TCE) v1.3 released

[Pekka Jääskeläinen]

TTA-Based Codesign Environment (TCE) v1.3 released
--------------------------------------------------

TTA-Based Codesign Environment (TCE) is a toolset for designing
application-specific processors (ASP) based on the Transport Triggered
Architecture (TTA). The toolset provides a complete retargetable
codesign flow from C programs down to synthesizable VHDL and parallel
program binaries. Processor customization points include the register
files, function units, supported operations, and the interconnection
network.

Notable new features
--------------------
- Support for LLVM 2.8 (support for LLVM 2.7 retained)
- ttasim: call info (setting profile_transfer_tracking) and the
   instruction profile (ttasim setting profile_data_saving) are now
   saved to separate pure text files to speed up simulation when these
   traces are enabled.
- ttasim: instruction profile can be converted to cachegrind-compatible
   traces which can be visualized with kcachegrind.
- SystemC integration: Possibility to add TTA simulation models to
   system level simulations with the ability to override the operation
   pipeline simulation models for the function units.
- Improved the scheduling for unconnected machines through temporary
   register copies based on the maze algorithm for ASIC place & route.
   Not restricted to maximum of two copies anymore.
- Basic support for debugging info when compiled with 'tcecc -g'.
   The source code line numbers are displayed as comments in 'tcedisasm'
   output and ttasim's disassembly.
- Platform Integration support is improved. New integrator components
   include AvalonIntegrator which can be used to integrate TTA to a
   Altera SOPC Builder component and KoskiIntegrator which can be used
   to integrate TTA processor to Koski toolset compatible IP blocks with
   IP-XACT 1.2 component description file.

Acknowledgements
----------------
Thanks to Fabio Garzia and Andy Lam who contributed their first patches
to this release!

Links
-----

TCE home page:     http://tce.cs.tut.fi
This announcement: http://tce.cs.tut.fi/downloads/ANNOUNCEMENT
Download:          http://tce.cs.tut.fi/downloads
Change log:        http://tce.cs.tut.fi/downloads/CHANGES

-- 
--Pekka