Mentor announces Synthesis support for Xilinx Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs

The Virtex-5 FXT is the new system integration platform from Xilinx that is optimized for high-performance embedded processing, digital signal processing (DSP), and high-speed serial connectivity (see the Video).

Support for the new Virtex-5 FXT platform is available now in the Mentor Precision RTL and Precision RTL Plus products, providing state-of-the-art synthesis for quickly implementing large, cost-efficient system-level designs that meet target specifications.

Xilinx and Mentor spent the last several months on integration and support of the Virtex-5 FXT platform with Mentor's family of synthesis tools.

The Precision Synthesis product forms the centerpiece of Mentor Graphics FPGA flow, which is claimed to be the industry's most comprehensive vendor-independent solution for FPGA design. 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 uniquely suited to handle today's high-end FPGAs.

In addition, the Precision Synthesis product features sophisticated 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 is claimed to offer 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.