Mentor Graphics PADS I/O Designer for FPGA-PCB Designs

Posted by Ken Cheung in Tool on Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) created the PADS I/O Designer(TM) product for their PADS(R) product user community. For designers implementing complex field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) on their PCBs, the I/O Designer(TM) product has a proven track record of decreasing design cycle time, improving performance, and lowering product costs. These same benefits are now available to the PADS product users at an aggressive entry price as the use of high density, high performance FPGAs increases across the spectrum of electronic products. For the first time the PADS I/O Designer product is being made available to the PADS community.

The PADS I/O Designer family provides for concurrent design of the FPGA and PCB by bridging these unique design flows and automating the various processes needed to implement today’s high pin-count, high-speed FPGAs on PCBs. Starting with nothing or an early hardware design language (HDL) description or a top-level DxDesigner(TM) product, the FPGA-PCB interface is quickly defined with a variety of correct by construction, drag and drop PCB signal to FPGA pin assignment methods. The PADS I/O Designer product then synchronizes the interface across the FPGA and PCB flows through:

  • Automatic DxDesigner and schematic generation
  • Automatic generation & maintenance of required FPGA vendor files, HDL files, and synthesis constraint files

In addition, the PADS I/O Designer product can import the PADS Layout physical design for FPGA vendor rules-driven pin swaps. When extended to PCB optimization, the PADS I/O Designer product leverages the PADS Layout physical design to drive PCB trace optimization through FPGA interface unraveling. The ability to optimize multiple FPGA interfaces simultaneously within a single PADS Layout physical design is also possible.

PADS I/O Designer is available immediately through the Mentor distribution channel with a starting price of $4,995.

More info:
Mentor Graphics Creates PADS I/O Designer for FPGA-PCB Designs
Mentor Graphics PADS

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