Speedy support for Cyclone FPGAs

The Mentor Graphics ModelSim simulation and LeonardoSpectrum synthesis design tools will be among the first to support Altera's new Cyclone FPGA device family.

The Mentor Graphics ModelSim simulation and LeonardoSpectrum synthesis design tools will be among the first to support Altera's new Cyclone FPGA device family.

Mentor's advanced solutions enable designers to target Cyclone device-based designs for price sensitive markets, including consumer applications such as digital television, DVD players/recorders and video displays and projectors.

"Mentor's immediate support for Altera's Cyclone devices underscores our joint commitment to providing our mutual customers with advanced solutions for their design challenges", said Anne Sanquini, vice president and general manager, HDL Design division, Mentor Graphics.

"With the introduction of the Cyclone device family, we can now provide FPGA solutions for high-volume, price-sensitive applications that previously required the use of fixed solutions such as gate arrays and standard cells".

"Cyclone devices are half the cost of competing solutions, which dramatically expands the market for FPGAs", said Tim Southgate, vice president of software and tools marketing at Altera.

"Mentor Graphics was one of the first EDA partners to provide support for Altera's high-performance Stratix device family and again is among the first to provide support for Cyclone devices.

Mentor's broad and timely support continues to be very important to the roll-out of our new device families".

The Mentor Graphics ModelSim tool provides Cyclone device designers with leading-edge simulation technology allowing mixed-language and platform flexibility.

ModelSim supports all FPGA libraries, ensuring accurate timing simulations.

Coupled with the most popular HDL debugging capabilities in the industry, ModelSim delivers high performance, ease of use and outstanding product support.

The Mentor Graphics LeonardoSpectrum synthesis tool allows Cyclone device users to design in VHDL or Verilog using one synthesis environment.

LeonardoSpectrum provides designers with advanced timing optimization, featuring its exclusive TimeCloser technology, push-button ease-of-use features and sophisticated design strategies.

With these features, users can carefully control and optimise FPGA designs to meet their exact requirements.

Cyclone devices are the industry's lowest-cost FPGAs.

With densities ranging from 2910 to 20,060 logic elements, Cyclone devices feature up to 288Kbit of embedded memory and are based on a 1.5V all-layer-copper SRAM process.

Cyclone devices offer up to two phase-locked loops (PLLs) per device and a hierarchical clocking structure for extensive on- and off-chip clock management.

Each device supports a variety of single-ended I/O standards such as LVTTL, LVCMOS, PCI, and SSTL-2/3.

Cyclone devices have dedicated circuitry to interface with high-performance external single-datarate SDRAM and double-datarate SDRAM and FCRAM memory devices.

LeonardoSpectrum and ModelSim with Cyclone device support are available immediately.

ModelSim runs on Windows 98, 2000, NT and XP platforms.

Supported platforms for LeonardoSpectrum include Windows NT, 98 and 2000, Solaris and HP-UX.

LeonardoSpectrum and ModelSim can also be found in the Mentor Graphics FPGA Advantage tool, which provides designers with a complete FPGA design flow including best-in-class design creation, simulation and synthesis capabilities.

Back to top