Date: 15/07/2010

New Diamond software for FPGA design from Lattice

Lattice has released the Version 1.0 of its new Diamond FPGA design software. The Diamond software package consists of set of tools, design flows, and user interface for designing low power, cost sensitive FPGA applications.

"We have used Lattice Diamond design software at Helion for the development of the Ionos line of video image processing pipeline IP, and were very impressed by the level of integration of so many different and powerful software tools into one GUI," said Dr. Arndt Bussman, CTO of Helion GmbH. "This integration takes our FPGA code development process to unprecedented levels of design productivity and quality."

"Diamond software gives our customers an easy to use, intuitive design environment that specifically addresses the critical design issues of cost sensitive, lower power applications. As designs become larger, and FPGAs are increasingly being used in more cost sensitive, high volume applications, designers need an easy to learn, flexible design environment for exploring different implementations to achieve their cost, power, and performance targets," said Mike Kendrick, Lattice's Manager of Software Product Planning. "The Diamond software allows designers to efficiently manage these multiple implementations in one project. In addition, Diamond software continues to provide the industry-leading features previously released within our ispLEVER® design environment that are specifically developed for low cost and low power applications. These include a very accurate power calculator, simultaneous switching output noise calculator, and the proven MAP and PAR FPGA implementation algorithms that take novel approaches to avoid congestion when targeting Lattice's industry-leading FPGA product line."

Lattice says the navigation in Diamond software is direct and intuitive. The attach/detach feature allows the activation of many alternate concurrent design views across the available screen space.

Diamond software supports multiple design Implementations. The design source can be shared among Implementations, or each Implementation can have its own unique design source.

The Diamond design has built-in HDL visualization and code checking. The new Timing Analysis View in Diamond software allows easy navigation of the static timing results. Tcl command dictionaries specific to the Diamond design environment are available for projects, netlists, HDL code checking, power calculation and hardware debug insertion and analysis.

The Diamond design environment is supported on Windows XP, Windows Vista (32 bit), and Windows 7 (32 bit and 64 bit), as well as Linux (Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell SUSE).

Synopsys' Synplify Pro advanced FPGA synthesis is included for all operating systems supported, and Aldec's Active-HDL Lattice Edition II simulator is included for Windows.

Video demonstrations of the Lattice Diamond design software can be viewed here: http://www.latticesemi.com/latticediamond/videos/

Price: The Diamond subscription license price is US$895 per year

Availability:
The Lattice Diamond software is available now for download from the Lattice website for both Windows and Linux.

For more information visit: www.latticesemi.com