S2C announces 4th generation rapid SoC prototyping solution

SAN JOSE, USA: S2C Inc., an advanced system-on-chip (SoC) design solutions provider, has released its fourth-generation rapid SoC prototyping tool, S4 TAI Logic Module, based on Altera's 40-nm Stratix IV FPGA.

Equipped with two Stratix IV EP4SE820 FPGAs, each featuring 820K logic elements (LEs), the Dual S4 TAI Logic Module supplies up to 30 million ASIC gates of capacity and provides 1,286 external I/O connections. Multiple TAI Logic Modules can be stacked or mounted on a interconnect mother board to meet even larger gate count needs.

The S4 TAI Logic Module has many dramatic improvements over the third-generation version. In addition to more than doubling the logic and memory capacity that can fit on single board, the new TAI Logic Module facilitates much higher system prototype performance and reliability through enhanced power management, cooling mechanisms and noise shielding.

Jim Smith, Altera's director of professional services, training and boards, said: "S2C's expertise in delivering proven hardware boards and automation software helps to greatly simplify the ASIC prototyping process. S2C's Stratix IV FPGA-based S4 TAI Logic Module provides ASIC designers access to the industry's highest density, highest performance FPGA, enabling them to decrease their ASIC prototyping development time and reduce the risk of costly respins.”

The S4 TAI Logic Modules can run both 2GB of DDR2 and 2GB of DDR3 memory at up to 667MHz. S2C offers a large library of off-the-shelf daughter modules, such as SRAM, DVI, PCIe and Gigabit Ethernet, to further accelerate customers' construction of FPGA prototypes for their applications.

“In addition to providing the highest performance and capacity standard prototyping hardware, S2C ensures that our users have an easy-to-use and time-saving prototyping experience by providing compatible software. Our TAI Player Pro software version 3.2 has been upgraded to fully support the Stratix IV FPGA, giving designers greater control over the prototype flow process, from multi-FPGA synthesis, partitioning and RTL-level probing to FPGA place-and-route," noted Mon-Ren Chene, chairman and CTO of S2C.

“Once designs are compiled, S2C's TAI Player software allows users to rapidly download them to the FPGAs, generate programmable clocks, and self-test hardware straightforwardly via a USB2.0 connection. Our goal has always been to allow our customers to focus on designing and verifying their SoC chips rather than on building or debugging FPGA prototypes.”

S4 TAI Logic Module is now shipping with either a Stratix IV EP4SE820 or EP4SE530 FPGA version. The S4 TAI Logic Module can mount either one or two FPGA devices per module. All S4 TAI Logic Modules adopt a similar forum factor to all previous TAI Logic Module generations, so existing customers can easily upgrade and re-use their current daughter cards or mother boards.