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Xilinx buys high-level synthesis EDA vendor
Dylan McGrath
1/31/2011 7:01 AM EST
Study by BDTI
Last year, Xilinx commissioned a study by independent consulting firm BDTI Inc. to evaluate high-level synthesis tool offerings. That study found that high-level synthesis tools for FPGA design deliver excellent results and are easy to use, but do not fully abstract users from the FPGA RTL tool flow.
Jeff Bier, founder and president of BDTI, said in an article published by Xilinx' Xcell Journal magazine last year that demanding applications implemented in handwritten RTL code on an FPGA have historically typically achieved relatively good quality of results but poor productivity, while applications implemented on DSP processors provided good productivity but relatively poor quality of result.
"Development time has been a key impediment for many system designers trading off the use of a programmable DSP processor vs. an FPGA," Bier said.
More than 25 Xilinx customers and Alliance Program members have adopted AutoESL’s flagship high level synthesis tool, AutoPilot, Xilinx said.
The AutoPilot high level synthesis tool is optimized for Xilinx FPGA architectures and intelligently generates register transfer-level RTL code that produces the best possible quality of results to meet throughput, power, area and timing design goals, according to Xilinx. It also reduces verification time by orders of magnitude due the advantage of working at a higher level of abstraction in C, C++ or SystemC, Xilinx said.
With high level synthesis, embedded designers using Xilinx’s Extensible Processing Platform will be able to more seamlessly partition designs between the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and the programmable logic, according to Xilinx. The combination of AutoPilot and Xilinx' ISE Design Suite will enable system architects, hardware designers and, eventually, embedded software developers to apply a combination of serial and parallel processing to address system requirements, Xilinx said.
In the first half of 2011, a new Xilinx-only version of AutoPilot will be available to customers, Xilinx said. In the future, AutoPilot will be an option for the company’s ISE Design Suite software, Xilinx said.
The AutoESL acquisition is Xilinx' first major acquisition of an EDA company in five years. In January 2006 Xilinx bought Feist's former company, Matlab-to-RTL DSP synthesis firm Accelchip
Last year, Xilinx commissioned a study by independent consulting firm BDTI Inc. to evaluate high-level synthesis tool offerings. That study found that high-level synthesis tools for FPGA design deliver excellent results and are easy to use, but do not fully abstract users from the FPGA RTL tool flow.
Jeff Bier, founder and president of BDTI, said in an article published by Xilinx' Xcell Journal magazine last year that demanding applications implemented in handwritten RTL code on an FPGA have historically typically achieved relatively good quality of results but poor productivity, while applications implemented on DSP processors provided good productivity but relatively poor quality of result.
"Development time has been a key impediment for many system designers trading off the use of a programmable DSP processor vs. an FPGA," Bier said.
More than 25 Xilinx customers and Alliance Program members have adopted AutoESL’s flagship high level synthesis tool, AutoPilot, Xilinx said.
The AutoPilot high level synthesis tool is optimized for Xilinx FPGA architectures and intelligently generates register transfer-level RTL code that produces the best possible quality of results to meet throughput, power, area and timing design goals, according to Xilinx. It also reduces verification time by orders of magnitude due the advantage of working at a higher level of abstraction in C, C++ or SystemC, Xilinx said.
With high level synthesis, embedded designers using Xilinx’s Extensible Processing Platform will be able to more seamlessly partition designs between the ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor and the programmable logic, according to Xilinx. The combination of AutoPilot and Xilinx' ISE Design Suite will enable system architects, hardware designers and, eventually, embedded software developers to apply a combination of serial and parallel processing to address system requirements, Xilinx said.
In the first half of 2011, a new Xilinx-only version of AutoPilot will be available to customers, Xilinx said. In the future, AutoPilot will be an option for the company’s ISE Design Suite software, Xilinx said.
The AutoESL acquisition is Xilinx' first major acquisition of an EDA company in five years. In January 2006 Xilinx bought Feist's former company, Matlab-to-RTL DSP synthesis firm Accelchip
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abed
2/4/2011 11:47 PM EST
what does it mean?
is the job opportunity increase for embedded system designer compare to vhdl or verliog (digital system designer) designer
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