CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
28 June 2004
Product News
Synplicity Extends Leadership Position in FPGA Synthesis by Delivering Greater Quality of Results in Latest Release
Synplicity® Inc. announced it has enhanced the latest versions of its Synplify® FPGA synthesis and Amplify® FPGA physical synthesis software to deliver higher quality of results (QoR) improvements for complex FPGA devices. With these enhancements to its FPGA synthesis software, Synplicity believes designers will experience improvements in their devices' timing performance, as well as achieve significant area/cost advantages. On average, the latest version of the Synplify software enables users to achieve a ten percent area optimization improvement for Altera's low-cost CycloneT FPGA devices and a five percent improvement on timing performance for Xilinx's Virtex-II Pro Platform FPGA devices, compared with previous versions of the software. Designers using devices from other FPGA vendors are expected to experience similar improvements. With these improved results, designers can maximize design performance, often enabling them to use a lower speed grade device, which can save tens of thousands of dollars in silicon costs.
"We believe this announcement furthers Synplicity's FPGA synthesis leadership position and delivers on the company's goal to consistently provide our customers with best-in-class quality of results," said Jeff Garrison, director of marketing for FPGA products at Synplicity. "The latest versions of our software emphasize area optimization for low-cost devices such as Altera's Cyclone and Xilinx's Spartan families, resulting in significant cost reduction opportunities, while improving timing optimization for high-capacity FPGAs, such as Altera's Stratix® II, Xilinx's Virtex-II Pro and Actel's ProASIC Plus. Our timing-driven synthesis algorithms allow users to specify the performance required and then optimize for area once their speed is met, resulting in a cost-effective implementation."
"With Synplicity's synthesis and physical synthesis software, customers now have access to leading-edge tools and design flows that maximize performance, but also result in smaller designs," said Tim Southgate, Altera's vice president of software and tools marketing. "Synplicity's efforts on area optimization for our low-cost Cyclone family deliver even more cost savings for our customers."
According to Steve Lass, director, software marketing at Xilinx, Inc., "Synplicity continues to deliver FPGA synthesis products that offer excellent quality of results and productivity advantages specifically optimized for our high-performance devices. By adding enhancements, such as the improved RAM inferencing, to the latest versions of its synthesis software, Synplicity will enable our mutual customers to achieve even greater timing performance for our Virtex-II Pro and Spartan-3 families than was possible with previous versions."
Enhancements to the Synplify software include improved support for mixed-language designs; enhanced RAM inferencing; hierarchical area reporting for RAMs, DSP and black boxes; and clock enable extraction for ALTSYNCRAM in Altera devices. In addition, the Amplify physical synthesis software now provides enhanced timing correlation between pre- and post-results, leading to fewer synthesis and place-and-route iterations. Test cases show more than 90 percent of the designs run had estimation differences within ten percent of the final post place-and-route timing numbers. The enhancements made to the latest versions of Synplicity's FPGA synthesis and physical synthesis software provide designers with the capability to quickly converge on aggressive timing for even the most complex devices, resulting in the highest quality of results.
The Synplify 7.6 and Amplify 3.6 software are available now. Pricing starts at $9,500 (U.S.) for the Synplify software and $29,000 (U.S.) for the Amplify FPGA software. For more information visit Synplicity's Web site at http://www.synplicity.com
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