Synplicity works for Siemens and Mindspeed

Both Siemens ICN and Mindspeed Technologies have standardised on Synplicity's Amplify Physical Optimizer software.

Both Siemens ICN and Mindspeed Technologies have standardised on Synplicity's Amplify Physical Optimizer software.

The industry's only physical synthesis solution for programmable logic devices (PLDs), the Amplify Physical Optimizer software performs simultaneous placement and logic optimisation so designers can meet the highest performance possible from high-density programmable logic devices.

Both Siemens ICN (Information and Communication Networks) and Mindspeed Technologies chose Synplicity's physical synthesis solution to help achieve high quality of results (QoR) for timing-critical PLD designs.

Siemens ICN will use the Amplify product to develop integrated voice and data networks while Mindspeed will develop Internet infrastructure equipment.

"As programmable logic devices have grown in complexity, our timing constraints have become more demanding", said Thomas Zipper, research and development engineer at Siemens ICN.

"We've tried everything to meet timing - relaxing DLLs, turning off resource sharing, adding pipelining - but have had difficulty handling complex designs.

The Amplify software enables us to simultaneously optimise and place logic and we've found we can meet our performance requirements in a fraction of the time possible with a traditional PLD design flow.

We believe the Amplify product is a requirement for high-performance PLD design".

Arie Frenklakh, systems group manager of the Israeli Design Centre at Mindspeed Technologies, added, "Before we found the Amplify Physical Optimizer product, we were forced to modify our original RTL and make many passes through synthesis and place and route in order to meet timing.

Unlike other synthesis products, Synplicity's Amplify software takes into account physical design considerations during synthesis, reducing the need for multiple iterations through place and route.

Using the software, we've seen 10 to 15% improvements in device performance and have shortened our development cycle by as much as 70% over synthesis alone".

Both Siemens ICN and Mindspeed have used the Amplify Physical Optimizer software to design PLDs from Altera Corp.

Synplicity worked closely with Altera to deliver enhanced support for the Altera APEX20K, APEX II, Mercury, ACEX and FLEX10K device families.

"With the Amplify Physical Optimizer software, Synplicity offers a unique synthesis solution for designers who require the highest performance from their PLDs", said Peter Woo, director of tools marketing at Altera Corp.

"With Synplicity's detailed understanding of our leading-edge device architectures, we've found the Amplify Physical Optimizer is able to deliver outstanding performance gains for complex designs targeted at Altera devices.

We are very pleased with the results our customers have obtained using Synplicity physical synthesis with our high-performing products".

Andy Haines, vice president of marketing at Synplicity, said, "Based on our proprietary Total Optimization Physical Synthesis (TOPS) technology, we believe our Amplify product overcomes the barriers to physical optimisation by incrementally performing detailed placement and optimisation of critical paths.

Physical synthesis is a key element for the implementation of today's multi-million-gate PLDs, and we are pleased our Amplify product delivered a solution that enabled Siemens ICN and Mindspeed to achieve high performance within a short development cycle".

First introduced in March 2000, Synplicity currently has more than 130 customers worldwide using the Amplify Physical Optimizer product.

According to Haines, customers using the second-generation Amplify Physical Optimizer product to perform detailed placement of logic have seen up to 50% performance improvements over logic synthesis alone.

An option to Synplicity's Synplify Pro synthesis solution, the Amplify Physical Optimizer software enables optimum performance by allowing the user to assign physical constraints at the RT level after HDL source code compilation, but before mapping, where maximum hardware performance can be achieved.

The Amplify software passes physical information to Synplicity's proprietary physical synthesis algorithms that simultaneously perform placement and logic optimisation, producing superior circuit performance.

Physical synthesis techniques such as interconnect-based logic optimisation, automatic logic replication and boundary optimisations on critical paths further improve performance without changing the HDL source code.

The Amplify Physical Optimizer product is available now as an option to Synplicity's Synplify Pro logic synthesis software.

Back to top