| FROM
THE EDITOR
This week we’ve completely
overhauled our Archives section with topical as well as chronological
indexing and new, improved search capability courtesy of Google.
Let us know how you like it.
Our first new feature article this week is
a message from our readers. We’ve known for awhile that new designers are streaming
into the FPGA domain at an incredible rate. Our “Engineers
Speak Out” feature has a summary and excerpts from your responses
to our “What’s Your Persona” article from a few
weeks back. We were surprised by the robustness of your replies,
and what we learned made us even more optimistic about the future
of FPGA design. (Is that possible?)
Our second
new feature comes from Sanjay Bali of Mentor Graphics.
Sanjay discusses the application of physical synthesis techniques
to complex FPGA design. With the growing complexity of programmable
logic projects, the application of physical synthesis is rapidly
moving from bonus to mandate.
Thanks
for reading! If
there's anything we can do to make our publications more useful
to you, please let us know at: comments@fpgajournal.com
Kevin Morris – Editor
FPGA and Programmable Logic Journal
|
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|
Engineers Speak Out
The Voice of the FPGA Design Community
A few weeks ago, in our “What’s your Persona?” feature
article, we discussed the fact that Xilinx is creating new divisions
for DSP and embedded processing. We speculated that the idea of focusing
on specific categories of new potential FPGA customers, creating groups
inside the FPGA company that understand the design challenges and speak
the technical jargon of each emerging subculture, would be a compelling
strategy.
We then decided to test that theory by asking you to drop us a line
telling us about yourself.
The response was both fascinating and overwhelming.
We heard from the people we expected to hear from.
We heard from the people we didn’t expect to hear from. We heard
from people we never even heard of. We heard many things we expected
to hear and many things that we never considered. What we can now conclude
is that the situation in the ASIC and FPGA market is even more interesting
and complex than we’d imagined. The responses also make us believe
that programmable logic is likely to dominate the digital design domain
over the next decade. [more]
Does
Single-pass Physical Synthesis Work for FPGAs?
by Sanjay Bali, Product Marketing Manager
Design Creation and Synthesis Division, Mentor Graphics Corp.
As mask prices and NRE costs rise to exorbitant levels, the ASIC route
becomes increasingly unrealistic for many applications, especially in
low- to medium-volume production quantities. Design starts using ASICs
have plummeted from a high of over 11,000 in 1997 to below 4,000 in 2003
(Source: Gartner Dataquest). With the advent of innovative FPGA architectures
incorporating embedded processors, memory blocks and DSP functions, many
designers who depended on ASIC methodologies are turning to FPGAs for
new generations of complex designs. The problem is that, increasingly,
these designers are the same person, i.e., one day they are designing
an ASIC and the next month they may target an FPGA. There are key
differences between the two types of silicon platforms that mandate specific
features in the EDA tools you need to develop and implement the latest
generation of FPGAs. This paper will make a case with respect to advances
in the physical synthesis space. [more]
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