FPGA Leader Drives Collaboration Across ESL Ecosystem to Proliferate
High-Level Design Methodologies and Tools
SAN JOSE, Calif., March 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX)
today launched the ESL Initiative -- a multi-faceted program aimed at making
electronic system level (ESL) design methodologies and tools more accessible
to programmable system designers. The initiative expands collaboration across
the ESL supply chain to better integrate and optimize ESL tool flows for both
hardware designers and software programmers targeting Xilinx FPGAs. Initial
participants include: Bluespec Inc.; Celoxica; CriticalBlue; Impulse
Accelerated Technologies, Inc.; Mitrionics, Inc.; Nallatech; Poseidon Design
Systems, Inc.; SystemCrafter; and Teja Technologies.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020822/XLNXLOGO
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060313/SFM039 )
The ESL Initiative underscores the commitment by Xilinx and ESL tool
providers to drive technological innovation and development of practical
solutions that deliver on the full potential of this high-level design
methodology. The initiative has identified four key areas of focus:
1) Improve ease of use to further simplify and abstract the details
associated with FPGA design
2) Optimize support for Xilinx embedded PowerPC(TM) and MicroBlaze(TM)
processor solutions
3) Improve the quality of results with high level language (HLL) synthesis
tools
4) Establish common standards for FPGA ESL tool interoperability
Technical collaboration will be backed by cooperative marketing and
educational programs to evangelize and promote the capabilities, strengths and
benefits of FPGA ESL solutions. As part of that effort, Xilinx today launched
the FPGA industry's first ESL knowledge center at http://www.xilinx.com/esl and user
blog at http://toolbox.xilinx.com/cgi-bin/forum . The site organizes
information on tools, design flows and applications, including details on how
designers can get started with an ESL product evaluation. The goal is to
empower the user community to make informed decisions about ESL methodologies
and solutions based on their specific requirements.
"Ensuring that all designers can readily access the benefits of
programmability is fundamental to our vision for the industry, and ESL is an
important convergence point for addressing the methodology and tool
requirements of both hardware designers and software developers," said Wim
Roelandts, president and CEO of Xilinx. "We are impressed with the success
that our ESL partners have had to date, and are committed to furthering their
efforts in a way that expands the reach of ESL solutions and FPGAs to new
applications and to users who have never before implemented designs in
programmable logic."
ESL for FPGA
ESL is an emerging design methodology that allows designers to work at
higher levels of abstraction than typically supported by register transfer
level (RTL) and gate level hardware descriptions. Its growth has been driven
by the continuing complexity of IC design, including the use of third-party
intellectual property (IP) blocks and embedded cores, which has made RTL and
gate-level methods less efficient. The proliferation of FPGA-based ESL tools
and methodologies will make it easier for designers to leverage programmable
devices for critical system applications such as algorithm acceleration, high
performance computing, high-speed packet processing, and rapid prototyping.
"The value of the current generation of ESL tools is particularly
appealing for our system level designers, so they can evaluate their
algorithmic expressions in hardware without needing to become hardware design
experts," said Sven Englund, principal engineer at DRS Power & Control
Technologies, Inc. "The ease-of-use concepts that are being pioneered by
Xilinx and participants in the ESL Initiative can simplify hardware design to
the extent that the details of hardware implementation in an FPGA could soon
become transparent to system architects."
Collaborating on Shared Vision
ESL tool development to date has focused primarily on the design of hard-
wired devices (ASICs, ASSPs). However, the increasing sophistication of
programmable system platforms such as the Xilinx Virtex(TM)-4 and Spartan(TM)-
3 FPGAs has accelerated the need for FPGA-based ESL design methodologies.
Spurred by the rapid growth and popularity of Platform FPGAs, many ESL tool
providers are incorporating support for Xilinx FPGAs as a key focus of their
product strategy. Collaboration with the ESL ecosystem is the principle tenet
of the Xilinx strategy and initiative for bringing ESL closer to the
mainstream FPGA community. Empowering the move to higher level design also
played a strategic factor in the recent acquisition of AccelChip, Inc. through
which Xilinx provides its own robust ESL tool support.
Many applications targeted for high-end FPGAs are initially captured
algorithmically in HLLs such as C or MATLAB. This has led to growing interest
by the FPGA user community in tools that can provide an implementation path
directly from HLLs to hardware. ESL methodologies hold the promise of
streamlining the design approach by accepting designs written in C or MATLAB
languages and implementing the function straight into hardware. Designers can
also leverage ESL to optimize performance by exporting compute intensive
"bottleneck" functions into an FPGA coprocessor implemented in programmable
hardware.
"Mercury provides a broad range of FPGA-based products, software tools,
and programming services. ESL tools will enable software engineers across the
board to manage their own programming requirements," said Craig Lund, vice
president and chief technology officer at Mercury. "We're excited to see
Xilinx's efforts to expand the ESL ecosystem for FPGAs, which will allow
customers to select the best ESL tool for their situation."
About Xilinx
Xilinx, Inc. is the worldwide leader of programmable logic solutions. For
more information, visit http://www.xilinx.com.
#0635
"ESL is increasingly relevant to FPGA customers. Best-in-class FPGA
solutions are complex systems that can benefit from approaches enabling rapid
design space exploration and delivering designs significantly faster and with
fewer bugs, but with the same quality of results. We commend Xilinx for this
initiative to promote ESL for the FPGA space."
-- Shiv Tasker, CEO, Bluespec Inc.
"This worldwide initiative represents yet another milestone in the growing
popularity and adoption of electronic system level (ESL) design and synthesis.
There is fundamental value and synergy in linking ESL with FPGA technology and
its positive impact will be felt across the spectrum of design projects that
integrate programmable logic with DSP, uP and custom hardware."
-- Phil Bishop, CEO, Celoxica
"The vision of the ESL Initiative is to bring the power of FPGA-based ESL
methodologies and tools to software development engineers as well as hardware
designers. Our Cascade embedded system design solution automatically generates
a programmable coprocessor that accelerates executable code on the FPGA, using
the embedded software itself as the high level language. The ESL Initiative
brings software and hardware design methodologies together in a complementary
way that both design communities can use."
-- David Stewart, CEO, CriticalBlue
"The best way to attract software developers to FPGA platforms is by
making software-to-hardware compilation easier. Our focus continues to be on
providing C-based tools that do not require low-level FPGA design skills. The
Xilinx ESL Initiative helps spread the message that software-to-hardware is a
practical and productive method of design."
-- David Pellerin, CTO, Impulse Accelerated Technologies, Inc.
"Mitrionics is excited to become a Xilinx ecosystem partner and contribute
to their ESL Initiative to broaden the reach of FPGAs to new development
platforms, design tools, and applications. FPGAs have long shown incredible
potential to benefit the computing world if they could become more easily
programmed. The Mitrion Platform achieves this goal by making FPGA
Supercomputing application development fast, easy, and practical for software
developers, scientists, and researchers without requiring any hardware design
knowledge or experience."
-- Anders Dellson, CEO, Mitrionics, Inc.
"The Xilinx ESL Initiative is the first major step by any FPGA vendor to
recognize the plethora of companies that have been busy making the FPGA
accessible to the software engineer. This initiative will help to bring these
disparate pieces together and will, in turn, make the technology far more open
and user friendly for software engineers."
-- Allan J. Cantle, President and Founder, Nallatech
"We are very excited to participate in the Xilinx ESL Initiative. Xilinx
FPGAs have a unique combination of processors, high-performance DSP blocks and
memory architectures which map well with the capabilities and road map of the
Poseidon tools. We believe that system-level design tools are the key driver
for the next-generation of embedded FPGA designs. With Poseidon tools,
customers can analyze, optimize and accelerate their designs while reducing
time to market. Poseidon tools will enable our mutual customers to get the
most out of both their design and the implementation fabric to meet the
rapidly growing market requirements in less time and at reduced cost."
-- Ravi Janak, CEO and President, Poseidon Design Systems, Inc.
"There is lots of buzz today around ESL. However, it is difficult to
filter out the relevant information as it pertains to FPGA-based design. The
Xilinx ESL Initiative web site and user blog are exactly what is needed. Our
designers will now have a great starting point to quickly access information
and exchange experiences with other users, so they can better understand,
select and apply ESL solutions."
-- John Jensen, Senior Member of Technical Staff, Rincon Research
Corporation
"We are delighted to be working with Xilinx as part of their ESL
Initiative. Our vision is to provide a tool that can bridge the gap between
SystemC and FPGAs, at an affordable price. This not only enables system-level
and hardware designers to implement their designs quickly and reliably, but
also opens up the use of FPGAs to a new market of C and C++ programmers. At
under $3000 for a perpetual license, our software gives Xilinx customers an
affordable way of designing FPGAs at a higher level."
-- Dr Jonathan Saul, CEO of SystemCrafter
"We've found that many of our network OEM customers are increasingly
moving their strategic functions into FPGAs. As a result, they are looking for
ways to work at a higher level and spend less time on low-level implementation
details, especially when dealing with the kind of multi-core designs that Teja
enables. The Xilinx ESL Initiative is helping raise awareness of the
availability of leading-edge ESL solutions that can help customers more
efficiently solve their design challenges."
-- Akash Deshpande, Founder and CTO, Teja Technologies
SOURCE Xilinx, Inc.
 back to top
Related links:
http://www.xilinx.com
Photo Notes:http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020822/XLNXLOGO
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060313/SFM039
AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org PRN Photo Desk
photodesk@prnewswire.com
CONTACT:
Laurie Stanley of Wired Island,
+1-408-879-5292, or laurie.stanley@xilinx.com, for Xilinx, Inc.
NOTE TO EDITORS: High resolution graphic available.
|
