New physical synthesis solution for Altera Stratix III FPGAs

The folks at Mentor Graphics say that their Precision RTL Plus product includes the industry's first vendor-independent physical synthesis to support the Altera Stratix III product family of high-performance, high-density field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

They also say that Altera's internal testing found that designs that benefit from Mentor's Precision RTL Plus product achieved performance improvement of over eight percent for Stratix III designs, compared to Precision Synthesis. Therefore, the Precision RTL Plus product can help users achieve faster timing closure, which could lower overall FPGA design development costs.

Altera and Mentor Graphics have worked closely together over the last six months, ensuring that their mutual customers will benefit from the increased productivity and comprehensive design synthesis support in using the Precision RTL Plus product for Altera Stratix III devices. Mentor's support for Stratix III devices is available now with the Precision 2007a Update 1 and later versions, and it is compatible with Altera Quartus II design software version 7.2 and above.

The Precision Synthesis product forms the centerpiece of the Mentor Graphics FPGA flow. It allows designers to cross-probe between multiple views as well as perform interactive static timing "what-if" analyses, and it is claimed to be the only synthesis tool which offers true push-button, multi-vendor physical synthesis for achieving the best quality of results.

With comprehensive language support, including SystemVerilog, advanced ASIC prototyping flow, and automatic incremental synthesis, the Precision Synthesis product is said to be uniquely suited to handle today's high-end FPGAs.