Mentor announces support for new Xilinx FPGAs

The folks at Mentor Graphics say that their suite of advanced synthesis products support Virtex-5 TXT FPGAs, the newest platform from Xilinx optimized for ultra high-bandwidth applications. They say that their Precision RTL and Precision RTL Plus products offer immediate availability of state-of-the-art synthesis support for designs targeting the Virtex-5 TXT FPGA platform.

The new Virtex-5 TXT FPGA platform delivers more 6.5 Gbps GTX transceivers than any other FPGA to enable the development of 40G and 100G systems targeting networking, telecom, audio/video broadcast and medical imaging. By providing a single, programmable chip solution for applications such as 100Gigabit Ethernet MAC to Interlaken bridging, the Virtex-5 TXT FPGA platform addresses the needs of the fledgling 100Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) market by enabling equipment manufacturers to keep pace with the explosive growth in bandwidth requirements while minimizing power, board and component costs.

The Precision Synthesis product line forms the centerpiece of Mentor Graphics FPGA flow – which they claim to be the industry's most comprehensive solution for FPGA design. The Precision RTL Plus product is said to offer breakthrough capabilities such as physical synthesis that 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.

With comprehensive mixed-language support including SystemVerilog, advanced support for application specific integrated circuit (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 said to be uniquely suited to handle today's high-end FPGAs. In addition, the Precision Synthesis products features design analysis capability, allowing designers to cross-probe between multiple views as well as perform interactive static timing for rapid "what-if" analyses.