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Oasys for FPGA Synthesis? Hmmmm….

Oasys for FPGA Synthesis? Hmmmm….
Posted on Wednesday, June 9, 2010 - 23:27 by harry from the site harry ... the ASIC guy
A friend asked me what I thought about Oasys’ announcement last week that Juniper Networks was now a customer of theirs. I’ll admit that I was lukewarm. On the one hand, a large high-end networking chip is exactly the sweet spot for a fast synthesis tool. On the other hand, it did not change the fact that the number of these large designs is dwindling and that the industry is looking more towards the front-end of the design cycle than the back. So, today he asked me what I thought about Oasys’ announcement of it’s partnership with Xilinx. Now this was interesting. Here is what I wrote back: __________ I’m not surprised. I had heard from some people that they had funding from Xilinx all along. Of course, they don’t say that in the press release Truthfully, I think the FPGA market may be a better play than ASIC for a few reasons: FPGA design starts are growing while ASIC starts are shrinking Do not have to compete with Synopsys and Cadence for market share. These would be bloody battles requiring a lot of resources that Oasys does not have. Synopsys would win by attrition. FPGA synthesis is truly a bottleneck for FPGA designs. The debug loop for most people is design => synthesize/place&R => debug => fix error => synthesis/P&R….. It’s not uncommon for there to be dozens of these loops to get an FPGA working. And synthesis on a large FPGA can be an overnight run. If they can turn that into a half hour, then that changes the whole method of debug and can save weeks of schedule. On the down side, ASPs for FPGA synthesis tools are $0 since Xilinx and Altera give theirs away for free, although Synopsys (Synplicity) and Mentor sell FPGA synthesis tools. This was discussed very recently on Olivier Coudert’s blog. Will be interesting to watch. __________ What do you think? harry the ASIC guy P.S. Oasys, can you get some real blogging software on your blog so people can leave their comments and thoughts there on your site and not on my blog. I don’t mind the traffic, but you are missing out on building a sizable following. Just some friendly advice. ShareThis
harry
A friend asked me what I thought about Oasys’ announcement last week that Juniper Networks was now a customer of theirs. I’ll admit that I was lukewarm. On the one hand, a large high-end networking chip is exactly the sweet spot for a fast synthesis tool. On the other hand, it did not change the fact that the number of these large designs is dwindling and that the industry is looking more towards the front-end of the design cycle than the back. So, today he asked me what I thought about Oasys’ announcement of it’s partnership with Xilinx. Now this was interesting. Here is what I wrote back: __________ I’m not surprised. I had heard from some people that they had funding from Xilinx all along. Of course, they don’t say that in the press release Truthfully, I think the FPGA market may be a better play than ASIC for a few reasons: FPGA design starts are growing while ASIC starts are shrinking Do not have to compete with Synopsys and Cadence for market share. These would be bloody battles requiring a lot of resources that Oasys does not have. Synopsys would win by attrition. FPGA synthesis is truly a bottleneck for FPGA designs. The debug loop for most people is design => synthesize/place&R => debug => fix error => synthesis/P&R….. It’s not uncommon for there to be dozens of these loops to get an FPGA working. And synthesis on a large FPGA can be an overnight run. If they can turn that into a half hour, then that changes the whole method of debug and can save weeks of schedule. On the down side, ASPs for FPGA synthesis tools are $0 since Xilinx and Altera give theirs away for free, although Synopsys (Synplicity) and Mentor sell FPGA synthesis tools. This was discussed very recently on Olivier Coudert’s blog. Will be interesting to watch. __________ What do you think? harry the ASIC guy P.S. Oasys, can you get some real blogging software on your blog so people can leave their comments and thoughts there on your site and not on my blog. I don’t mind the traffic, but you are missing out on building a sizable following. Just some friendly advice. ShareThis
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