Lattice makes ‘major’ fpga software upgrade
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In a major upgrade to its design software, Lattice has introduced Diamond, which it claims will be the company's 'flagship' design environment.
The move has been made to cope with increasing numbers of power and cost sensitive applications for fpgas. Mike Kendrick, Lattice's manager of software product planning, said the introduction was the first major software upgrade which Lattice has done in 10 years. "We have seen the need for more design exploration and this software includes the ability to do this."
Three basic areas have been upgraded: design exploration; ease of use; and design flow. In terms of design exploration, Diamond includes what are called implementations and strategies; ways in which designers can perform 'what if' approaches. "You can have multiple implementations of a design," Kendrick noted. "Strategies are like a recipe for a design and the combinations selected will give different results for parameters such as area."
Along with an improved GUI, which Kendrick called 'intuitive', the package also includes an hdl check before synthesis. "The design flow has been improved throughout," he continued. "Important elements are the timing and analysis views, along with a simulation wizard."
Diamond essentially replaces the existing ispLever software. "One of the issues with Lever," said Kendrick, "was that the strategies were not very visible." ispLever will continue to be supported for customers designing cplds. "We anticipate supporting it for another year," Kendrick claimed, "but we will 'end of life' it at some point."
Diamond will be available as a free download to support designs targeted at Lattice's Mach XO, XP, XP2, EC/P and ECP2 parts. However, a subscription model is available to extend support to the SC/M, ECP2M and ECP3 devices.
