Synplicity's ``Partners in Prototyping'' Program Takes the Guesswork Out of ASIC RTL Prototyping.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 15, 2000 Innovative Program Brings Together Leading Hardware, Software and Design Service Providers Reinforcing its commitment to providing ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) Pronounced "a-sick." A chip that is custom designed for a specific application rather than a general-purpose chip such as a microprocessor. designers with complete Register Transfer Level (RTL (Register Transfer Level) A high-level hardware description language (HDL) for defining digital circuits. The circuits are described as a collection of registers, Boolean equations, control logic such as "if-then-else" statements as well as complex event sequences; ) prototyping solutions, Synplicity, Inc. today introduced its Partners in Prototyping (PIP) program. The new program brings together leading hardware, software and design service providers to offer a proven methodology for building FPGA-based prototype boards quickly and easily, further speeding the overall ASIC design and development cycle. Once these complementary solutions are proven to work with Synplicity's leading Certify(TM) software tool, the documentation and technical information is then posted on a central Web site, allowing ASIC designers to visit a single destination for their prototyping needs. "Until now, designers looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. a proven methodology for developing FPGA-based prototype boards for hardware and software verification Software verification is a broad and complex discipline of software engineering whose goal is to assure that a software fully satisfies all the expected requirements. There are two fundamental approaches to verification:
n. Informal Work, such as collecting information or doing research in preparation for a project, that involves much walking or traveling about. we can save our customers valuable time, allowing them to focus on meeting their design specs and time-to-market demands." Establishing an RTL Functional Prototyping Design Flow Synplicity established the Partners in Prototyping program to identify and qualify a design methodology between Certify and complementary hardware, software and design services used in RTL functional prototyping. Incorporating RTL functional prototyping into the ASIC design flow offers designers substantial time to market advantages and enables early system software debugging. The availability of pre-defined, interoperable solutions reduces the risk of incorporating this FPGA-based prototyping methodology into an existing design flow. The six charter members of the Partners in Prototyping program include Wyle Design Services, Verplex Systems , The Dini Group, MicroFuzzy (Germany), Amirix Design Services (Canada) and Simpod. Each company has worked closely with Synplicity to verify interoperability between its own products and the Certify RTL prototyping tool in order to develop a smooth flow for ASIC designers, system designers and IP developers. Certify customers can take advantage of this joint development by visiting the Partners in Prototyping Web site to find information on the products and services available from the member companies. Designers can also use the site to quickly evaluate whether a standard board exists to meet their specific design requirements by downloading board descriptions (.vb files) from the site. Synplicity expects the PIP Web site will be active by the end of May 2000. Companies interested in joining the Partners in Prototyping effort can also visit Synplicity's Web site for more information. About Certify Leveraging Synplicity's core synthesis and partitioning technologies, Certify allows designers to create functional hardware prototypes of their design prior to ASIC synthesis. This unique approach results in higher performance and productivity than gate-level partitioning approaches, which require multiple iterations to achieve a suitable partitioning of the devices, and enables faster time-to-market, especially for the one-million-gate-plus ASIC/SoC designs used for multimedia and communications applications. Certify also enables extensive verification that previously could not be performed at the RT level without weeks of manual effort and modification of the RTL code. The creation of a functional hardware prototype at the RT level enables ASIC designers to perform the following tasks at or near system speed: hardware/software co-verification; algorithm development and verification; verification of intellectual property, either cores or library elements; system software development and debugging, verification of system-level protocol compatibility and early system/product development with FPGAs. About Synplicity Founded in 1994, Synplicity Inc. delivers the benefits of logic synthesis The conversion of a high-level electronic circuit description into a list of logic gates and their interconnections, called the "netlist." Every logic synthesis program understands some subset of Verilog and VHDL. and embedded synthesis technologies to programmable logic See PLD. and ASIC designers by developing fast, easy-to-use, affordable tools with extremely high quality of results. Synplicity products support industry-standard design languages (VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) A hardware description language (HDL) used to design electronic systems at the component, board and system level. VHDL allows models to be developed at a very high level of abstraction. and Verilog), run on popular platforms (Windows 95/98, Windows NT (Windows New Technology) A 32-bit operating system from Microsoft for Intel x86 CPUs. NT is the core technology in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (see Windows). Available in separate client and server versions, it includes built-in networking and preemptive multitasking. and UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). ) and support leading PLD (Programmable Logic Device) Refers to a variety of logic chips that are programmable at the customer's site, the customer being the vendor of the finished chip, not the end user. manufacturers. Synplicity is a Platinum member of the Cadence Connections Program (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange : CDN (Content Delivery Network) A system of distributed content on a large intranet or the public Internet in which copies of content are replicated and cached throughout the network. ), Synopsys Liberty Program (Nasdaq: SNPS SNPS Space Nuclear Power System ), and other industry standards organizations. The company is located at 935 Stewart Drive, Sunnyvale, Calif. 94086. Telephone: 408/215-6000; Fax: 408/990-0290; E-Mail: info@synplicity.com. Synplicity is a registered trademark and Certify is a trademark of Synplicity, Inc. All other brands or products are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their owners. Synplicity's Partners in Prototyping Amirix Design Services, Richard Vallee, Director, Business Development "AMIRIX(TM) Systems Inc. has worked with customers across several emulation and prototyping projects. We are excited to work with Synplicity to bring our expertise in FPGA/PLD, custom board, and embedded system Any electronic system that uses a CPU chip, but that is not a general-purpose workstation, desktop or laptop computer. Such systems generally use microprocessors, or they may use custom-designed chips or both. design into an innovative tool like Certify." The Dini Group, Mike Dini, President "The Dini Group's standard prototyping boards have been used with success by Certify customers around the world. Through the Partners in Prototyping program, Synplicity is once again demonstrating its commitment to delivering simply better results to ASIC designers overcoming the verification crisis." MicroFuzzy, Markus Waidelich, Director Research & Development "MicroFuzzy has worked with leading German companies to deliver a modular, standard logic emulation capability which provides both high performance and small form factor. The support for our LOGES system with Certify means that customers can gain the advantages of in-circuit testing and high-speed functional verification Functional verification, in electronic design automation, is the task of verifying that the logic design conforms to specification. In everyday terms, functional verification attempts to answer the question "Does this proposed design do what is intended?" This is a complex task, directly at the RTL stage of ASIC design." Simpod, Charles Miller, vice president of sales "Our DeskPOD product offers Certify customers a defined methodology for debugging the prototyping system, as well as accelerating hardware verification. With our experience in hardware modeling, hardware/software co-verification and complex ASIC debugging, we appreciate the advantages that a Certify-based RTL prototyping methodology offers ASIC designers." Verplex, Dino Caporossi, Verplex Director of Marketing "Synplicity and Verplex both recognize the needs of ASIC designers to adopt methodologies which accelerate a `right the first time' implementation of their designs. We intend to support Certify customers since Verplex specializes in verifying the highly optimized designs produced by these types of methodologies." Wyle Design Services, Tim Hurd, Intellectual Property Business Manager "With our proven track record for providing design services to both ASIC and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) A type of gate array that is programmed in the field rather than in a semiconductor fab. Containing up to hundreds of thousands of gates, there are a variety of FPGA architectures on the market. designers, Wyle is well positioned to assist customers in their RTL prototyping and intellectual property integration efforts. Synplicity's training of our field engineers on Certify, combined with our expertise with high performance programmable logic, means that a customer can integrate prototyping into their project schedule with confidence that they will be fully supported." |
|
||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion