Most of us just press the button.

It’s easy to just push the button for synthesis and place-and-route and forget that there is an awful lot of complicated stuff going on behind the scenes from the time we hand our new, shiny HDL over to our FPGA design software, head out for a coffee break, and return to our desk to get the happy message back that our run is all finished and our design fit and routed and met… oh, wait – 576 timing violations.  Suddenly, things are not so happy anymore. </ … Read More → "Beyond the Go Button"

Anybody familiar with Altera FPGAs knows the GX designation.  It’s the suffix that goes on when the family gets upgraded with high-speed serial transceivers.  First we had Stratix, then Stratix GX.  Next, at 90nm we got Stratix II and then Stratix II GX.  Now the company has announced their 65nm lines.  There’s Stratix III, now Cyclone III, and we’re waiting for the GX and… What’s this?  Arria?  90nm again? Confused?  We’ll sort it out for you.

Altera and … Read More → "Serial Commodotization"

If the chain of tools comprising your design flow works flawlessly in getting your hardware ideas to silicon quickly, then the value of that flow is priceless. However, if one or more of the links in that chain is broken or corrupted, then the value of that flow plummets.. Whether you are thinking about assembling a new design flow or auditing your existing flow, this paper covers methods for improving the effectiveness of that chain of tools.

Introduction

Design flows tend to grow in complexity over time. These flows consist of commercial tools … Read More → "The Value of a Complete FPGA Design Flow"

We all know the basics of Moore’s law, right?  Every new process node brings a bounty of the three “Ps” – Price, Performance and Power.  Most of us can recite them like the alphabet.  Missing from our recitation, however, might be some other things that come with a new process node – Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Chromium, PBBs and PBDE – now THOSE will taste nice on your breakfast cereal.  Electronic waste is a major polluter, and, thanks to Moore’s Law, we always have better, faster, cooler products to offer the … Read More → "It Isn’t Easy Being Green"

Pieter has been a fisherman all his life.  When he was a boy, he would spend every spare moment at the pier with his grampa’s old fishing rig, catching whatever would wander near the dock, all the while watching the fishing fleet leave and return under the bridge that spanned the entrance to the small harbor.  He never liked cleaning the fish, however, so he would catch and release them, returning home with wildly exaggerated stories of the giant fish he had landed and then returned.  Since no one but Pieter ever saw those … Read More → "Fishing for Signal Integrity"

FPGAs are a series of pipes. They’re not something you just dump something on. They’re not a big truck. If you don’t understand that, those pipes can be filled, and if they are filled, when you put your data in, it gets in line and it’s going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that pipe enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.

Apologies to US Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)

OK, maybe that’s … Read More → "Sampling Some FPGA IP"