CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
1 April 2008
Product News
Mentor Graphics Announces Synthesis Support for Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT Field Programmable Gate Arrays
Mentor Graphics Corporation announced that its suite of advanced synthesis products support Virtex™-5 FXT field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) – the system integration platform from Xilinx, Inc. optimized for high-performance embedded processing, digital signal processing (DSP) and high-speed serial connectivity. Support for the new Virtex-5 FXT platform is available now in the Mentor Graphics Precision® RTL and Precision RTL Plus products.
The 65nm Virtex-5 FXT platform, with up to two PowerPC® 440 embedded processor blocks as well as high-performance DSP and high-speed serial capabilities, delivers broad system integration capabilities for creating system solutions in support of high-performance applications such as wireless, video, military and aerospace. The processor, DSP and high-speed serial integration help reduce board complexity and lower the overall cost of system design.
“Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs provide integrated solutions for designs that previously required an ASIC or ASSP, reducing design respins and overall development costs,” said Simon Bloch, general manager, Mentor Graphics Design Creation and Synthesis Division. “Our mutual customers will benefit from our physical synthesis solution that has the ability to analyze and manage large complex designs that can be implemented into the new Virtex-5 FXT platform.”
Xilinx and Mentor Graphics spent the last several months on integration and support of the Virtex-5 FXT platform with Mentor Graphics’ family of synthesis tools. “FPGAs are expected to outpace the semiconductor market, and Xilinx strives to deliver the most flexible, low-cost, and broadest FPGA platform in the industry,” stated Bruce Talley, vice president and general manager, design software division of Xilinx, Inc. “A significant number of our customers depend on Precision for their synthesis solution. Our collaboration and partnership with Mentor, assures them that they will be able to implement their designs in the environment they are familiar with while getting superior quality of results possible when targeting the new Virtex-5 FXT family.”
The Precision Synthesis product forms the centerpiece of Mentor Graphics FPGA flow. With advanced support for ASIC prototyping (support for DesignWare® libraries, SDC constraints, gated-clock handling, etc.) plus advanced implementation and optimization techniques such as automatic mapping and inferencing of dedicated DSP and RAM blocks, the Precision Synthesis product is suited to handle today’s high-end FPGAs. In addition, the Precision Synthesis product features a design analysis capability, allowing designers to cross-probe between multiple views as well as to perform interactive static timing for rapid "what-if" analyses. The Precision RTL Plus product offers breakthrough capabilities such as vendor independent physical synthesis which provides industry-leading quality of results, automatic incremental synthesis to reduce the impact of late design cycle changes, and patent-pending functionality which enables the efficient utilization of architectural blocks.
Become a member of the CIMdata PLM Community to receive your daily PLM news and much more.
Tell us what you think of the CIMdata Newsletter. Send your feedback.
CIMdata is committed to your privacy. Your personal information will never be sold or shared outside of CIMdata without your express permission.