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FROM EDN EUROPE: FPGA-design software includes microprocessor IP

Nexar is a software-design environment aimed at bringing
a new ease of use to working with FPGAs and exploiting the new generation of
complex but affordable programmable products (href="contents/images/404553f1.pdf">Picture). It combines elements of hardware and embedded software-design systems, IP blocks, virtual instrumentation, and a reconfigurable development board to provide a drag-and-drop approach to building processor-based systems on FPGAs. Graphical schematic-capture tools allow the interconnection of presynthesised and preverified IP (intellectual-property) components, including a range of processor cores. You can simultaneously build the circuit (translated to FPGA-configuration code by the Nexar software) and embed software virtual instruments, such as logic analysers and signal sources.

The schematic entry links to an EDIF description, where Nexar's library holds processor models with the complexity of 8051, Z80, or PIC164 processors. There are also compatible peripherals, and the software incorporates conventional logic design where there is no off-the-shelf IP. You can combine Nexar with Altium's board-design-product Protel to take the design through to a completed pc board. The FPGA vendor's own software handles FPGA place and route, according to your target device. (Altium says it will support all of the devices in common use.) You install this software on the design system, but Nexar calls it transparently. The environment handles writing embedded code within the same system and understands the partitioning of each hardware and software; changes in code will not cause the systems to resynthesise unless you change the hardware.

With this concept, the company says it has addressed two major issues preventing average engineers from designing embedded systems on FPGAs: obtaining the IP itself (the IP in Nexar is royalty-free) and integrating it without heavily investing in tools that derive from ASIC methodologies. Also, Altium adds, current methodologies don't address the issue of integrating software development and debugging into the same environment. Altium circumvents issues of gate-level simulation and hardware/software partitioning in development by including its NanoBoard platform hardware in the system. The FPGA itself forms part of a reconfigurable development target. You prototype on the target device, and, in contrast to simulation, Altium says, your verification tells you whether the design does rather than should work. Base price for the Nexar system is €8000.

Altium, +61 2 9975 7710, www.altium.com.

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