SCIENCE

WILSONVILLE, OR -- Mentor Graphics Corporation today unveiled a technology roadmap defining its new approach for next-generation programmable logic synthesis. Named "Project Atlanta," the roadmap calls for new synthesis technology to be delivered in three phases over the next 18-months: Phase I - Heuristic Synthesis; Phase II - Physical Synthesis; Phase III - High-Level Synthesis. The first phase of Project Atlanta will be released into a beta program in the fourth quarter of 2001. As part of this initiative, Mentor Graphics has mobilized a research and development team of noted synthesis experts, significantly increasing the company's overall focus on FPGA synthesis. The team includes scientists and hardware and software development engineers from all areas of synthesis, including Register Transfer Level (RTL), physical and behavioral. These resources will be pooled into the new FPGA Synthesis business unit. "The advent of system-on-chip (SoC) designs on programmable logic platforms requires EDA vendors to adapt their tool offerings to deal with unprecedented technical challenges, including massive frequency increases and exponential gate count growth," said Dr. Walden C. Rhines, chairman of the board and chief executive officer for Mentor Graphics. "In the programmable logic market, technology and chip complexity are moving faster than anticipated. In order to remain ahead of the curve, Mentor Graphics has turned significant corporate resources to this market space." Fabrication process improvements down to 0.13-micron enable high-frequency, multi-million gate SoC devices to be built on a programmable platform. To preserve the time-to-market benefits of these programmable devices as they increase in complexity, design tools must be available in parallel with new device releases. Synthesis tools must maximize usable gate count in devices with embedded processors and extensive on-chip interconnect and peripherals. To that end, Mentor Graphics has long-standing technology partnerships with programmable device market leaders, Altera Corp. (Nasdaq: ALTR) and Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX), to deliver synthesis for all new devices released by the vendors. In phase one, Mentor will focus on a new approach to FPGA synthesis known as Heuristic Synthesis. Heuristic synthesis incorporates years of design knowledge into the synthesis tool enabling it to focus on larger building blocks in the design, such as CPUs, ROMs, RAM, CAMs, etc., to build very fast and efficient structures. In addition to the quality of results benefits, Heuristic synthesis infers design intent reducing the time required to create complex architectures, increasing simulation performance and decreasing the design complexity. In phase two, Mentor Graphics will deliver the industry's only true physical optimization solution for FPGAs. Leveraging technology from Mentor's leading ASIC timing closure tool, TeraPlace(TM), phase two will merge physical information and data with synthesis algorithms. FPGA designers will be able to improve design performance by replacing inaccurate wire load models with data that properly accounts for interconnect delays. Phase three will make available synthesis software that enables designers to design at a higher level of abstraction, allowing for rapid design exploration and implementation. For more information visit www.mentor.com