Wednesday, November 11, 2009

New Lattice FPGA design tool suite includes advanced support for high performance DDR interfaces

HILLSBORO, USA: Lattice Semiconductor Corp. announced Version 8.0 of its ispLEVER FPGA design tool suite, which includes many enhancements for the design of high speed double data rate (DDR) interfaces for the LatticeECP3(TM) FPGA family.

These enhancements include automatic interface code generation to increase design productivity and reduce coding errors, as well as enhanced timing analysis that provides more transparency to circuit timing details.

"Although our ECP3 FPGA family probably is best known for its low power and SERDES capability, it also provides very advanced support for high performance DDR interfaces. Designers can now use ispLEVER 8.0 software to build and validate high speed, robust DDR interfaces more quickly," said Mike Kendrick, Lattice's Manager of Software Product Planning.

Enhanced LatticeECP3 support for high speed DDR interfaces
The IPexpress tool now can generate the HDL for the most appropriate generic DDR interface based on user requirements such as direction, speed and bus width. This HDL has been specifically designed and validated for high performance, robust operation. For the ECP3 family, certain DDR interfaces can now be implemented with much higher pin layout flexibility.

Since an important part of robust DDR interface operation is a clean transfer between the IO and fabric clock domains, the Trace static timing analysis report has been enhanced to include a "Timing Rule Check" section that specifically analyzes these clock domain transfers. This is done automatically and does not require users to define additional timing constraints.

The IPexpress tool can now also optionally generate the complete I/O-specific circuitry for proprietary DDR memory interfaces, allowing designers to focus solely on the controller logic of their DDR1 and DDR2 DRAM interfaces.

Improved runtime performance
Continuous improvement and innovation in place and route algorithms enable ispLEVER 8.0 software to complete large, congested designs 30% faster than with the previous ispLEVER 7.2 SP2 release.

The ispLEVER 8.0 tool suite for Windows, LINUX and UNIX users is available immediately without charge for customers with active design tool maintenance contracts. Pricing for the full ispLEVER design tool suite starts at $1,295 for the Windows version.

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