Date: 25/04/2012

The 5th EDA software with analytical place and route for VLSI design, but for FPGA

Xilinx has announced totally new FPGA design software called "Vivado Design Suite" for its latest 28nm family, ARM core integrated Zync and 3D stacked FPGA devices.

The key strengths of this new software package Vivado is it uses analytical place and route for programming logic functions on the FPGA chip. Xilinx claims its first such company among the chipmakers to offer such a complex design tool. In the whole electronics industry, only 4 other are selling VLSI design software tools with analytical place and route capability. They are Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor Graphics and Magma Design Automation, according to Xilinx.

Vivado is designed to reduce chip-design time from weeks to days. This tool is designed to take less computing resources either on a PC or server.

Both for FPGA design and general VLSI design, this tool is expected to create high value due to its performance and moderately priced offering by Xilinx. Company intend to provide good software support and generate profit out of its 28nm chips rather than this software.

Detailed Vivado features to be covered in our next article.