Collaboration brings customised synthesis tools to FPGA customers

Synopsys’ Synplify Pro synthesis software and Identify RTL Debugger are integrated into Microsemi’s Libero SoC Design Suite, a comprehensive suite of design tools used with the company's FPGA products, including its PolarFire FPGAs. Synopsys’ solutions enable faster design time with area optimisation for cost and power, accelerating FPGA development. These capabilities further enable the features of Microsemi’s PolarFire FPGAs, such as what the company claims to be the industry’s lowest power at mid-range densities with 12.7 Gbps Serialiser/Deserialiser (SerDes) transceivers, as well as security and reliability.

“Extending our longstanding relationship with the Synopsys team enables us to continue leveraging the company’s extensive expertise in synthesis technology while allowing Microsemi’s engineering resources to focus on supporting the advanced features and capabilities unique to our FPGA devices,” said Jim Davis, Vice President of software engineering at Microsemi. “Synopsys’ Synplify Pro synthesis software is specifically designed for FPGAs and is well-known as the de facto industry standard for producing high performance, cost-effective designs for these devices.”

Synopsys’ Synplify Pro software is an industry standard tool for producing high performance and high level optimisations with fast runtimes synthesising the RTL code for large designs on Microsemi’s FPGAs and system-on-chip (SoC) FPGAs. In addition, Synopsys offers Synplify Premier with multi-vendor support and advanced features, including support for Microsemi FPGAs.

Microsemi’s Libero SoC Design Suite offers high productivity with its comprehensive, easy to learn and easy to adopt development tools for designing with the company’s FPGAs including the new cost-optimised PolarFire FPGAs. The suite includes a complete design flow using Synopsys Synplify Pro synthesis software together with Microsemi’s significantly enhanced constraints management, differentiated FPGA debugging suite, SmartDebug and secure production programming solution (SPPS).

“We were pleased to support Microsemi throughout the early access programme for PolarFire FPGAs and are proud to be a part of its mid-range FPGA launch,” said Andrew Dauman, Vice President of engineering in Verification Group at Synopsys. “The successful release of these unique devices, including early adoption amongst Microsemi’s customer base, is yet another example of our productive technology collaborations and we look forward to continuing this important relationship for all of Microsemi’s FPGA technology.”

Key benefits of Synopsys’ Synplify Pro synthesis software and Identify RTL debugger for Microsemi FPGA customers include:

• Run time acceleration with multi-processing support
• Faster incremental turn-around times with compile point integration
• Broad language support for Verilog, SystemVerilog, VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) and mixed language design
• Customisable tool command language (TCL) scripting environment for custom flows and reports
• Inference of wide multiplexers, sequential shift, large static random access memory (LSRAM), µSRAM, and math blocks