This was, by far, Synopsys' most significant and controversial acquisition. Its products included: Platform Architect, Model Designer, Model Library, Processor Designer, Signal Processing Designer and Virtual Platform Designer.Īvanti Corporation (styled as "Avant!) was founded when several former Cadence Design Systems employees bought the startup ArcSys, which was previously merged with Integrated Silicon Solutions (ISS), gaining Avanti its design rule checking and layout versus schematic tool Hercules (including 3D silicon structure modeling), then bought Compass Design Automation, which had fully integrated IC design flow and ASIC libraries, especially its place and route tool, which Avanti reworked to create Saturn and Apollo II and it also bought TMA (Technology Modeling Associates) which brought their pioneering TCAD and Proteus optical proximity correction tools. On February 8, 2010, Synopsys announced an acquisition of CoWare. In 2005, CoWare acquired the Signal Processing department from Cadence. CoWare is one of the founding member of SystemC language. In 1996, CoWare spun off as an independent company. CoWare was headquartered in San Jose, California, and had offices around the world, major R&D offices in Belgium, Germany and India.ĬoWare development was initiated by the Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre ( IMEC) in Belgium as an internal project in 1992.
#Synplify pro vs vivado software
CoWare ĬoWare was a supplier of platform-driven electronic system-level (ESL) design software and services.
#Synplify pro vs vivado verification
Synopsys history made some silicon and design verification acquisitions. The company was initially established as Optimal Solutions with a charter to develop and market synthesis technology developed by the team at General Electric. I guess other companies could try to reverse-engineer the information, but for now, you'll have no choice but to use the FPGA vendor software for P&R.Īfter synthesis and P&R, you have a binary file that is ready to be "downloaded" into the FPGA.Synopsys was founded by Aart J de Geus and David Gregory in 1986 in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. P&R is always done by the FPGA software from the FPGA vendor, because FPGA vendors do not publish enough information about the internals of their devices to allow any other company to create P&R software. P&R can take a few seconds for a small FPGA, or a few hours for a big one. Place-and-route (P&R) describes several processes where the netlist elements are physically places and mapped to the FPGA physical resources, to create a file that can be downloaded in the FPGA chip. Synthesis can be done by the FPGA vendor's (free or non-free) software, but can also be done by third-party (non-free) software like Synplify Pro.ĭoing the synthesis using a third-party software usually yields better-optimized netlists (put more and/or faster logic into your FPGAs). Synthesis takes your design (HDL or schematic) and creates a flat netlist out of it.Ī netlist is just that, a "list of nets", connecting gates or flip-flops together.įlat means the netlist doesn't have a hierarchy it's one big file with all the nets in it (but the net names might still reflect the hierarchy of your original design). The FPGA software major task, in addition to facilitate design-entry, is to synthesize and place-and-route your design.