TI announces lower pricing for 'C80 tools

TI has announced a dramatic reduction in the price of TMS320C80 tools, substantially increasing the number of developers who can benefit from the 'C80's performance and design potential.

The suggested resale pricing of the 'C80 Software Toolkit (release 1.01) is now U.S. $12,500. This price includes master processor (MP) and parallel processor (PP) C compilers and source debuggers, MP and PP algebraic assemblers, a linker, a simulator, and source code examples. Other application software will be licensed on an individual basis.

The additional tools consist of the 'C80 XDS510WS emulator and cable and the XDS Source Debugger Software. Suggested resale pricing is U.S. $6,000 and $4,000, respectively.

TI will continue to significantly reduce the cost of 'C80 devices and tools through 1997.

Version 1.10 of the 'C80 toolkit is planned for the second quarter of 1995. Updates for the new version will include:

• New PP compiler optimizations resulting in a 15 percent improvement in performance.
• Little endian support (with the exception of the simulator).
• Modifications to all tools to ease the task of linking PP and MP codes.

PC-based tools (compilers/assemblers/linker/debuggers) are planned for third quarter 1995.

'C80 silicon (version 2.0) has been shipping in sample quantities for more than a year. Production release (version 3.0) will support 3-volt, 40-MHz devices and synchronous DRAM. Version 3.0 will sample in the second quarter of 1995.

TI's 1995 plans for the 'C80 will include increasing and enhancing the tool offerings and providing additional customer training.