Web based FPGA design resource offers IP directory

Based on a web browser and with no software installation required, the Chip Path portal and IP directory allow engineers to design, research, compare and select hundreds of IP blocks for use with FPGA devices from multiple vendors. The site lists a combination of free models and models which can be bought using a credit card. According to CEO George Janac: "Customers will have access to vendor neutral tools that provide impartial FPGA mapping from the four major vendors and Achronix. As FPGAs have embraced the latest 28nm nodes much faster than ASICs or ASSPs, they have increasingly become a competitive solution for box, board, and systems designers." In the web based offering, Chip Path has aggregated 6000 IP cores from more than 400 vendors. The result, it says, will allow design costs to be reduced significantly and design time decreased. The portal features devices from Altera, Lattice, Microsemi, Xilinx and Achronix. Chip Path says more than 29 FPGA families are supported; more than 11,000 part numbers and speed grades. Using Chip Path's approach, architects can design chips using semantic or placeholder IP, directly using vendor IP or their own internal IP to create, assemble and test athe economic viability of their designs. The system can map pure FPGA devices, as well as those with SoC style partitions. The FPASSP portal supports SmartFusion, SmartFusion 2, Zynq-7000, Arria V SE/SX and Arria 10 SE/SX parts. Users can aggregate data on all available IP and FPGAs and are said to be 'assured' that they will receive the most accurate and competitive information. Meanwhile, the ChipArchitect tool, based on semantic models, can generate more than 1.8million channel and core models with either a hard embedded IP or FPGA fabric implementation. Additional tools allow blocks to be added from a vendor's IP catalogue or from internal sources.