How is XPRES different from Behavioral Synthesis or ESL?
A3: A variety of approaches – with buzzwords such as “behavioral synthesis,” “C-language hardware synthesis,” and “ESL” – have all fallen short of the mark because they all try to solve what is essentially an intractable problem: transforming a description written in a sequentially executable language into a parallel collection of interoperating, non-programmable hardware blocks. Tensilica’s XPRES Compiler tackles this design problem using a far simpler, more direct approach. Instead of attempting to create application-specific hardware from scratch, the XPRES Compiler starts with a fully functional microprocessor core and then adds hardware to it in the form of additional execution units and corresponding machine instructions to speed processor execution for the target application. Thus the XPRES Compiler starts with a working hardware design (the Xtensa microprocessor core) and makes it run faster for the targeted application code. Because this is a considerably less complex problem,
