Aptix Introduces Prototype Studio

The manufacturer says . . .

Murray Disman says . . .

Aptix Introduces Product Line with New Options for Pre-Silicon Prototyping Target-Neutral Prototyping Supports Reconfigurable Prototyping Platforms and "Roll Your Own" System Prototypes SAN JOSE, Calif.--Nov. 11, 2002--Aptix Corporation, a supplier of system-on-a-chip (SoC) prototyping software and hardware, announced a new product line—Aptix Prototype Studio. Aptix Prototype Studio extends the benefits of Aptix-proven prototyping technology to developers of custom multi-FPGA printed-circuit boards (PCBs), and incorporates support for Aptix-traditional prototyping products System Explorer and Software Integration Station (SIS). It provides a complete RTL to pre-silicon prototype (PSP) flow, regardless of whether the target is a hard-wired or reconfigurable PSP. "We are leaders in the SoC prototyping market, and our customers have asked us to extend our prototyping product line to include prototyping flows that give them powerful, cost-effective, hardware-target-neutral options for their SoC prototypes, and help with the design of a SoC's hardware/software interface," remarked Charlie Miller, Sr. VP of Marketing and Business Development at Aptix. "With Aptix Prototype Studio, our customers can use a common prototyping flow and database for both our reconfigurable platforms and custom hard-wired multi-FPGA printed-circuit boards." Miller added, "We also changed our pricing model to allow multi-discipline design teams to use our Software Integration Station's reconfigurable prototyping platforms on a time-based term-pricing basis. Our customers now have the advantage of 'instant' prototypes at about the same price as a custom hard-wired PCB." Aptix Prototype Studio, which includes Aptix Design Pilot, supports partitioning a monolithic SoC design across multiple FPGA devices, working within the pin constraints of the FPGAs, mapping SoC constructs like gated clocks into structures more appropriate for FPGAs, and debugging with the PSP when problems are uncovered in the design. Xilinx Support, Customer Acceptance Aptix Prototype Studio supports the latest, state-of-the-art FPGA devices from Xilinx. Ivo Bolsens, CTO at Xilinx, said, "Aptix' RTL to PCB flow offers state-of-the-art automation with outstanding quality-of-results (QoR) with its built-in Xilinx technology. We are pleased that Aptix has found Xilinx Virtex II FPGAs to offer the best solution for its customers' multi-FPGA prototyping needs." "We used Aptix Design Pilot software to quickly map our network-gateway SoC design into FPGA technology for a pre-silicon prototype that helped us achieve first-pass success with our last chip," said Eric Lee, Vice President, IC technology, at Silicon Data, Inc. "We are using Aptix Prototype Studio in our current project to help design and produce a quantity of custom FPGA-based printed-circuit boards so we can deliver early pre-silicon prototypes to our software development team." New Product Line-Up PCB linkAptix Prototype Studio is available in three forms: Aptix Prototype Studio/PCB is available to designers targeting only hard-wired PCBs. Aptix Prototype Studio/Pro supports the Aptix traditional reconfigurable prototyping products System Explorer and Software Integration Station. Aptix Prototype Studio/Enterprise supports all hardware targets. The link from the Aptix prototype database to a hard-wired PCB uses FPGA Connector from Translogic BV (Ede, The Netherlands). This link includes the automatic creation of the homogeneous and heterogeneous symbols necessary to interface to industry-standard schematic editors, which reduces the tedious set-up requirements for symbol creation into a mere matter of minutes. The link converts HDL descriptions into pin constraints for FPGAs, and includes version management to ensure database consistency and accuracy. This use model promotes parallel engineering efficiency for schematic entry, FPGA place-and-route, and board layout. With an up-to-date FPGA library, Tcl scripting for design iterations, and extensive export formats for maximum schematic interface flexibility, Aptix now provides a complete RTL to CAD-ready mapping flow. "FPGA Connector incorporates our accumulated knowledge of FPGA to board development in an easy-to-use software program. FPGA Connector solves the real-world problems encountered by developers who target hard-wired printed-circuit boards. We are pleased that Aptix will incorporate our product in Aptix Prototype Studio. "FPGA Connector offers a unique process of moving through the design flow, from the top-level HDL description to the PCB level symbol, as well as to the physical pin information, necessary for the FPGA place-and-route tools," said Tom Hassink, Director of Sales, Translogic. Pricing and Availability Aptix Prototype Studio/PCB is provided as a time-based software license. Pricing begins at $79,500 for a one-year license. Aptix Prototype Studio products are shipping now.

There are two interesting aspects to Aptix's announcement. One is term- and/or project-based pricing for its prototyping hardware and associated software. This move, which has been made by other EDA companies, is in response to the very tight budgets that are currently being imposed on chip and system developers. The other is the Aptix Prototype Studio packages that bundle the company's Design Pilot software with tools that facilitate the creation of customer-built prototyping boards. These are hard-wired, FPGA-based, boards that do not contain the programmable switch used in Aptix's System Explorer and Software Integration Station hardware. As a result, the hard-wired PCBs run much faster that the Aptix hardware, but not as fast as the eventual ASIC implementation. System Explorer is the company's programmable prototyping platform that is used during the initial stages of a project for architectural exploration, algorithm evaluation, IP integration, and hardware debug. Software Integration Station is a lower cost version that is oriented towards the software developer. Aptix envisions a number of uses for the PCB prototypes that are produced by the chip developer. These PCBs can be delivered to the final customer for evaluation, field testing, and application software development. In addition, the chip developer can use the PCBs to develop manufacturing test programs for the final silicon.

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