FPGA synthesis comes with pitfalls that are becoming more of
a liability as the devices themselves grow in complexity. Timing closure
can take multiple synthesis iterations. Also, design iterations are getting
longer. Last-minute design changes mean a full place-and-route
run, requiring hours for a large FPGA. And, it's difficult to control and
analyze how logic is mapped to device-specific blocks.
Mentor Graphics' Precision RTL Plus tool takes these issues head-on.
It offers an average Fmax improvement of 10% over the earlier Precision
RTL tool with typical gains of 5% to 40%. Supporting 19 FPGA families,
it covers a range of devices from multiple vendors.
Precision RTL Plus performs a global placement with awareness of
the FPGA's routing resources as well as of basic design-rule checking.
The tool determines critical paths before performing synthesis to create
an optimized netlist before full placement and routing.
Two incremental synthesis flows address lengthy iterations. One is
fully automatic and requires no partitioning. The other is partitionbased
for a divide-and-conquer approach. The automated flow couples
with Xilinx's SmartGuide technology for a fully automatic incremental
synthesis and place-and-route flow. Prices start at $27,100.
Mentor Graphics
www.mentor.com
