CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
4 April 2005
Implementation Investments
Xilinx Uses the Precision Synthesis Tool from Mentor Graphics in its Advanced FPGA Design Training Courses
Mentor Graphics Corporation announced that its Precision® Synthesis tool will be integrated into two Xilinx Education Services courses for complex FPGA designs. Xilinx selected the Precision Synthesis tool because the synthesis flow from Mentor Graphics is already tightly integrated into the Xilinx ISE design environment. Precision Synthesis also has the functionality and capabilities needed to explain the complex FPGA design concepts presented at these advanced classes. Expected customer demand, plus the Precision Synthesis tool's ability to provide high quality of results in terms of maximum frequency and area, was motivation to include the tool in the company's advanced FPGA design training classes.
Both of the training courses, entitled Designing for Performance and the Advanced FPGA Implementation, focus on advanced FPGA techniques for challenging design situations. The first class teaches students how to fit their designs into smaller FPGAs or lower speed grades, thus helping them create more efficient designs and reducing their overall system cost. Topics in the second class include ways to manually place logic, as well as creating and editing timing constraints, among others. Students also learn how to take advantage of the clock resources of the Virtex and Spartan families of devices, with their efficient clocking schemes.
"Our classes add tremendous value, since they typically include training on tools that the students regularly use for their high-end designs," said Patrice Anderson, worldwide manager of customer education at Xilinx. "We found this to be the case with Precision Synthesis."
"Advanced classes are becoming mandatory for today's FPGA designers as device sizes and complexities reach ASIC-like levels. While a pushbutton approach may work in some cases, optimizing larger FPGAs to meet design specifications with predictable schedules increasingly calls for innovative techniques and productive flows," said Simon Bloch, general manager of the Design Creation and Synthesis Division at Mentor Graphics. "Mentor Graphics will continue to work with Xilinx to help our mutual customers leverage the advanced capabilities of our tools and fully benefit from the power and flexibility of today's high-end FPGAs."
The Precision Synthesis tool is optimized to deliver superior synthesis results. Tightly integrating both logical (Precision RTLT) and physical (Precision PhysicalT ) optimization techniques, Precision Synthesis empowers customers to start designs right, improve designs quickly, and efficiently meet project requirements. It allows users to cross-probe between multiple views, providing added control during design analysis. By using advanced physical techniques, design iterations and place-and-route runs can be shortened or in some cases eliminated, streamlining the development of next-generation FPGA-based system designs. With intuitive design project management and full-featured incremental timing analysis, the Precision Synthesis tool enables companies to solve next-generation FPGA implementation and timing challenges, resulting in shorter design cycles, improved competitiveness and significantly higher performance. For more details please visit: http://www.mentor.com/products/fpga_pld/synthesis/ .
The Precision Synthesis tool is the third Mentor Graphics® tool used by Xilinx in its classes. The other advanced tools include the HyperLynx® tool, for signal integrity issues, and the ModelSim® tool, for simulation and verification, both of which are already actively used in Xilinx training classes. The advanced Xilinx FPGA classes start in April 2005. To learn more about Xilinx training courses, class schedules and enrollment, go to: http://www.xilinx.com/education .
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