HES-DVM Proto Cloud Edition gives engineers easy access

HES-DVM Proto CE can be used with Aldec’s HES pre-silicon prototyping boards, third party boards or platforms users developed in-house and costs just $2,359.50 per month, so is suited for use on projects with short prototyping phases. Alternatively, for companies with multiple projects on the go, HES-DVM Proto CE is a great way of evaluating HES-DVM before committing to investing in the traditional licensed version.

“We introduced HES-DVM’s automatic FPGA partitioning feature in 2019,” has said Zibi Zalewski, General Manager of Aldec’s Hardware Division. “And it proved an immediate success because it allows users to automate the setup of multi-FPGA design prototypes, reduce errors and save lots of time.”

Zalewski goes on to say that current SoCs are designed to meet many ASIC type requirements, such as power efficiency, clock distribution, gating and hierarchical bus architecture to assure the highest performance, avoid deadlocks and minimize power demand peaks.

He added: “Meeting these many ASIC requirements calls for a design architecture and hierarchy that rarely fits easily into an FPGA-based prototyping platform because of the way resources need to be allocated and interconnections made. Changing the design hierarchy for the sake of the prototyping stage is to be avoided, so it is important to have a tool which will automatically create balanced partitions - picking and placing module instances across the original design hierarchy.

“The tool should also provide a fine grade of controllability and advanced analysis for timing critical paths or evaluating alternative FPGA partitioning schemes and their impact on interconnections. Of equal importance, explains Zalewski, is the automatic handling of I/O connections with LVDS-based serializers to resolve issues caused by limited numbers of FPGA I/Os.

“All of the above wishes of designers are met by our HES-DVM, which is a well-established and trusted EDA tool. Now, HES-DVM Proto CE makes this extremely powerful capability available - at an affordable price and in an easily scalable manner thanks to the ‘on-demand’ cloud operation model - to engineers desperate to reduce their ASIC and SoC design protype bring-up times.”

HES-DVM Proto CE is delivered as an AWS AMI ready-to-use environment with DVM partitioning software and Aldec’s proven SyntHESer fast synthesis engine. Users need only copy the design RTL source code and can start partitioning immediately, avoiding typical IT or software maintenance issues. The highest level of security is assured by Amazon AWS and the strict process of qualifying the AMI for the AWS Marketplace.

HES-DVM Proto CE can be used for prototypes containing up to four Xilinx FPGAs – present on off-the-shelf prototyping boards like Aldec HES, third party or even in-house-developed FPGA boards that are custom-made for a given project and provide features not available on commercial platforms.

If a subsequent revision of the project grows and requires more than four partitions, there is a seamless migration path to the on-premises (standard licensed) version of HES-DVM, which can support any number of FPGAs.

Zalewski concluded: “HES-DVM Proto CE is aimed at mid-sized projects with budgets to match. In essence, we’ve made a very affordable version of an extremely powerful and time-saving EDA tool available to users who may not need to be design partitioning year-round.”