Top PLD vendors to use MTI's design flows

Electronic News, April 7, 1997 by Peter Brown

Under terms of the agreement, programmable logic vendors and MTI will promote and support the adoption of HDL-based design flows to work with proprietary field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs). According to industry observers, the move to HDL in programmable logic has direct ties to the increase in density in FPGA and CPLD designs. As high density devices become more available the need for new design methodology also becomes a need as well. Programmable logic vendors agree HDL-based designs are the answer to this new methodology. Last week's agreement is targeted at these OEMs who have demanded that high density programmable logic devices (PLDs) integrate HDL design methodology.

"Not only are Xilinx's high-end customers rapidly adopting VHDL and Verilog, but customers at all design levels are demanding standards-based design methodologies," said Kenn Perry, GM and director of software marketing at Xilinx. "To meet those demands, we will continue to partner with leading suppliers such as MTI to provide the industry-leading solutions needed to give users the best results in the programmable logic industry."

According to Actel, however, the need for HDL-based designs results in the increasing demand for intellectual property (IP) cores. This is important because many of the cores available today--including digital signal processors (DSPs) and PCI cores--are designed in HDL formats, the company said.

"One of the major requirements for utilizing intellectual property cores in FPGA design is a flexible and powerful mixed-HDL simulation environment," said Michael Saniei, software product line manager with Actel. "We see an increasing demand for cores, and FPGA designs more and more include cores developed in different HDL languages. Model Technology provides unique capabilities in VHDL, Verilog, and mixed-HDL simulation targeted for those types of designs."

Altera, Actel and Xilinx will use MTI's V-System/VHDL, VLOG, and Plus simulators for its OEMs FPGA and CPLD designs, MTI said. The programmable logic companies will also include seminars and workshops aimed at educating customers in the technologies and methodologies needed to solve FPGA and CPLD design problems incorporating HDL.

"This program really indicates to the market, that HDL-based design is important to the leaders in the programmable logic business," said Bob Barker, VP of marketing at Exemplar Logic, who has had an OEM agreement with MTI for two years. "It mirrors our own programs with these vendors and ensures the users of these silicon technologies and MTI's and Exemplar's tools will have the best support mechanism going forward."

MTI said its V-System/Plus simulator has been integrated into more than 13,000 FPGA installed units worldwide. The simulator offers VHDL, Verilog and mixed-HDL language support as well as IP support. MTI claims that the V-System/Plus allows designers to integrate into the simulator any IP regardless of what language it was developed in.

MTI also has OEM relationships with Synario Design Automation, Lucent Technologies, Exemplar and Mentor Graphics.