Synthesis Support Rolls For Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs

May 22, 2006

Two major EDA vendors—Magma Design Automation and Mentor Graphics—have both announced synthesis support for Xilinx’s new Virtex-5 family of FPGAs.

David Maliniak

Two major EDA vendors—Magma Design Automation and Mentor Graphics—have both announced synthesis support for Xilinx’s new Virtex-5 family of FPGAs. The vendors are now making early-access software available.

Magma’s Blast FPGA synthesis tool delivers optimized and intelligent implementation options, enabling users to realize the performance gains available in the new Virtex-5 FPGAs without manual user intervention or multiple design iterations. It enables designers to improve the area usage and performance of these 65-nm devices.

Blast FPGA interfaces with FPGA implementation tools such as the Xilinx ISE design suite and supports vendor-specific design constraints, netlists, and IP or library blocks. The tool builds its workflow on top of the FPGA physical design framework.

Mentor Graphics has collaborated with Xilinx over the past year to ensure support for the full range of Virtex-5 LX devices with the upcoming releases of the Xilinx ISE design suite and Mentor Precision Synthesis software. Built on a unified data model, the Precision Synthesis tool suite allows designers to cross-probe between multiple views, giving users added control when analyzing designs. This design analysis capability is coupled to an intuitive debug environment. To further enhance engineering productivity, Precision Synthesis includes an incremental timing analysis tool.

About the Author

David Maliniak | MWRF Executive Editor

In his long career in the B2B electronics-industry media, David Maliniak has held editorial roles as both generalist and specialist. As Components Editor and, later, as Editor in Chief of EE Product News, David gained breadth of experience in covering the industry at large. In serving as EDA/Test and Measurement Technology Editor at Electronic Design, he developed deep insight into those complex areas of technology. Most recently, David worked in technical marketing communications at Teledyne LeCroy. David earned a B.A. in journalism at New York University.