Board-on-chip toolset ready: Altium to roll out Nexar this quarter.

SYDNEY -- Last May Altium Ltd. floated a technology called "board-on-chip" design that integrated software and hardware for designing an entire embedded system onto an FPGA. The concept turned the conventional method--in which an FPGA was a component of a system--inside out, opting for putting a system into an FPGA.

The concept will become reality this quarter as the company (altium.com) rolls out a toolset that offers parallel design of software and hardware. "We're looking at FPGAs as a connected collection--a parallel set--of components, not a piece of silicon on which the whole design sits," Rob Irwin, Altium manager of brand strategy, told PCD&M.

Called Nexar (after the IEEE protocol Nexus), the system's appeal is that it works much like traditional PCB design. Traditionally, IP is provided as source code and must be integrated at the HDL level. In this case, Altium has written the code and presynthesized it, permitting it to be packaged into a ready to-use component. "Using off-the-shelf devices, the designer will design in a traditional way but the end-product will be an FPGA device, not a board," Irwin explains. "If a designer wants a multiplexer, he picks it out."

The toolset is vendor independent for FPGAs. Altium calls its library of IP blocks "fairly extensive." with multiple versions of 8051 and other processors available. Altium has contracted with designers to supply reusable reference designs, which the company will make available.

Still, PCB designers will probably not be the earliest adopters, Irwin says. "They need more exposure, to see the barriers are down. Once that door is open--and we think it is open--this toolset is very well-suited for them." That said, Irwin thinks Nexar's ease-of-use will facilitate adoption. "FPGAs are daunting," Irwin says. "There's a whole new set of vocabulary. Nexar is all push-button."

Typical applications for Nexar's initial release include 8-and 16-bit embedded systems for industrial controls, automotive and "white goods," and processor-based applications that currently use FPGAs to implement large blocks of combinatorial logic. Future releases will cover more types of designs, including digital systems using off-the-shelf devices.

Altium's design capture tool, nVisage, will become a subset of Nexar and will be upgraded as the company rolls nut LiveDesign, its live environment for debugging.

Nexar runs on Windows 2000/XP It lists at $7,995 for a standalone license, "in line with the Altium model," Nancy Eastman, president of Altium's U.S. subsidiary told PCD&M. "Our philosophical approach is to get tools in ever) one's hands."

Edited by Mike Buetow