The Embedded System Development Kit (ESDK) provides a powerful, low-cost solution for prototyping and rapid development of the products. The board has a powerful Altera Cyclone FPGA and has industry standard interconnections, memory subsystem, multiple clocks for system design, JTAG configuration and expansion headers which provides greater flexibility and additional user interfaces.

The SLS ESDK gives scope for designing, prototyping and testing IP cores or any hardware design using HDLs like VHDL, Verilog or SystemVerilog. The entire environment helps implement any processor as well as any real time operating system on the ESDK. The ESDK along with 8051 IDE serves an excellent means for system designing, prototyping and emulation. The SLS 8051 IP is pre-built and can be loaded into the FPGA. Using the 8051 IDE C and assembly programs can be downloaded and executed on the system. The SLS ESDK can be used for DSP applications by interfacing directly to a DSP processor or implementing DSP functions inside the FPGA. In short, it is a dual-purpose kit, which can be used for prototyping and developing VLSI designs as well as designing and developing microprocessor based embedded systems.

The ESDK ships with Altera starter suite software and download cable. For using additional hardware interfaces and developing advanced applications, SLS also provides Altera standard Santa Cruz snap on boards.