Altera Corporation

Web: www.altera.com
Phone: (800) 767-3753

The most comprehensive environment available for FPGA, CPLD, and HardCopy Stratix designs, the Quartus® II design software includes pioneering timing closure and block-based design methodologies to help designers reach new levels of performance and productivity.

Background Information

HardCopy® II structured ASICs build on the success of Altera's first two generations of structured ASICs to deliver the lowest-risk, fastest time-to-market solution in the industry. Engineers can test their designs with Stratix® II FPGA prototypes, then Altera’s HardCopy Design Center seamlessly migrates the designs to a low-cost, functionally equivalent, pin-compatible HardCopy II devices. The HardCopy II family delivers:

• 90-nm technology with two-layer metal customization
• Over 350-MHz system performance
• 50 percent core power reduction as compared to the Stratix II FPGA prototype (dynamic and static)

In contrast to previous HardCopy families, which were based on a coarse-grained FPGA architecture, the HardCopy II architecture is built on fine-grained structured cells called HCells. HCells support seamless migration from the FPGA while providing the density, cost, performance, and power benefits of ASIC technology.

After using Stratix II FPGAs for prototyping and testing, designers are guaranteed functionally equivalent drop-in replacements for their system design.

Industry-Standard Software Support

Designing for HardCopy II structured ASICs requires no new or expensive design tools. Using familiar Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, or Synplicity design software with Altera's Quartus® II software, structured ASIC designs can be prototyped faster than ever before. Quartus II software lets engineers design for both Stratix II FPGAs and HardCopy II structured ASICs, as well as estimate the final performance and power consumption. Designs can be started today in Quartus II software version 4.2.

Software Updates

ModelSim-Altera Edition

• Recommended for simulating all FPGA designs (Cyclone®, Arria®, and Stratix® series FPGA designs)
• 33 percent faster simulation performance than ModelSim®-Altera® Starter edition
• No line limitations

ModelSim-Altera Starter Edition

• Support for simulating small FPGA designs
• 10,000 executable line limitation

Learn more about the ModelSim Altera Editions

Product Information

Altera's product line includes a variety of FPGA & CPLD devices as well as associated design software:

• Altera introduces the Cyclone™ II FPGA family, the latest in the Cyclone series of low-cost FPGAs. Altera forever changed the FPGA industry with the introduction of the Cyclone device family in 2002—bringing to market the first and only FPGA family designed from the ground up for the lowest cost. Altera took the same approach and built the Cyclone II family with each member individually optimized for minimum die size. The Cyclone II FPGA family offers the same benefits as its predecessor—a customer-defined feature set, industry-leading performance, and low power consumption—but with much more density and features—at dramatically lower costs. Cyclone II devices extend the low-cost FPGA density range up to 68,416 logic elements (LEs) and up to 1.1 Mbits of embedded memory. 
• Altera's StratixTM II device family - FPGA performance reaches new heights with the Stratix™ II device family—the industry’s fastest and highest-density FPGAs. Built on a new and innovative logic structure, Stratix II devices on average deliver 50% faster performance and offer more than twice the logic capacity of first-generation Stratix FPGAs. Stratix II devices extend the possibilities of FPGA design, allowing designers to meet the high-performance requirements of today’s advanced systems and avoid developing with costly ASICs.  Based on the award-winning Stratix device family architecture, Stratix II devices are outfitted with a powerful set of system-level features and incorporate many significant enhancements and new capabilities.
• Quartus II 4.2 Software - #1 in Performance - Use Altera’s technology-leading Quartus II design software in combination with a broad portfolio of design-ready intellectual property (IP) cores to get unmatched levels of performance and ease-of-use, as well as faster time-to-market. Recent benchmarks demonstrate that the Quartus II software now delivers the highest performance available for high density FPGAs, low cost FPGAs, and CPLDs.

** Attention MXE Users **

For information on how to transition from MXE (ModelSim Xilinx Edition) to a ModelSim product, please contact your sales representative.

Atmel Corporation

Web: www.atmel.com
Phone: (408) 441-0311

Background Information

Atmel Corporation is a global leader in the design and manufacture of microcontrollers, and complementary products such as capacitive touch sensing ICs, ASICs, nonvolatile memory and radio frequency components. Leveraging one of the industry's broadest intellectual property (IP) technology portfolios, Atmel is able to provide the electronics industry with complete microcontroller based system solutions focused on consumer, industrial, automotive, security, communications computing markets. By providing tools and support Atmel enables those customers to lead the markets they serve with electronic products that are smaller, smarter, more cost-effective and versatile than ever before.

For more information, visit Atmel website.

Software Updates

ProChip Designer V5.0

ProChip Designer 5.0 is a fully featured EDA suite with state-of-the-art synthesis and simulation tools from Mentor Graphics that are seamlessly integrated into a user-friendly design environment. It supports VHDL and Verilog design flows for the ATF15xx family of Complex Programmable Logic Devices [CPLDs]. This software suite also includes leading edge fitter technologies, which enable Logic Doubling in Atmel ATF15xx CPLDs, as well as a JTAG In-System Programming utility. Optional add-on tools can be used in conjunction with ProChip Designer 5.0 to support Schematic and CUPL design flows.

EDA suite with Atmel OEM version of Mentor Graphics Precision Synthesis and ModelSim for Atmel ATF15xx CPLDs.

ATSTK94

Atmel offers a low-cost development kit for the designer who wishes to begin working with the award-winning FPSLIC™ (AT94K) family of devices. The kit allows designers to design, synthesize, simulate and program Atmel’s new FPSLIC product.