Archive for the ‘FPGA Design’ Category
Tuesday, February 24th, 2015
 Taking a cue from the open-source community, Xilinx has launched a Tcl Store that aggregates Tcl scripts contributed by the greater development community to expand the capabilities of the Vivado® Integrated Design Environment.
All Tcl scripts contributed to the Xilinx repository are free and re-distributable under an open-source license that is based on the Berkeley Source Distribution (BSD) model. Vivado users can now download apps from the Tcl Store that include practical bundles of Tcl scripts that act just like Vivado commands, including an app that can integrate Aldec Active-HDL and Riviera-PRO tools within the Vivado design flow.
To take advantage of these pre-packaged Tcl Script apps within Vivado, users can access the Tcl Store via the Vivado IDE “Tools” menu. For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: Active-HDL Simulator, Aldec, Aldec Active-HDL, Riviera-PRO tools, Tcl scripts, Tcl Store, Vivado design flow, Vivado Integrated Design Environment, Xilinx
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Tuesday, February 24th, 2015
This week, February 22-28, we celebrate National Engineers Week in the US to recognize the contributions to society that engineers make. During this time, there is added emphasis in schools on the importance of learning math, science, and technical skills.
I work with Generation STEAM, a group organized by the SYN Shop MakerSpace and the Henderson district library to create a series of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, [Art], and Math) classes that are free to the public. For my part, I’ve had the privilege of teaching a basic electronics class for kids a few Saturdays this year – and it’s been a blast. Our hope is that we are encouraging a few young people to follow the path of engineering.
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Tags: Aldec, Electronics Engineering, engineers week, future engineers, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, STEM
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Thursday, December 11th, 2014
Well folks, last call from Engineer Santa. Aldec’s #12DaysofUsefulGifts giveaway will end this Friday, December 12 at 12pm midnight Pacific Standard Time.[preview_cut]
If you haven’t registered yet, you’ll want to hurry and visit www.aldec.com/survey. There you will take a brief verification survey and be entered to win.
If you’ve been keeping up with us on Twitter and YouTube, you know that we’ve given away some fun prizes already. If you are looking for some practical and useful gift ideas for the holidays, you might want to take a closer look. I’ve already talked about some of these from Days #1-4. We’ve given away more prizes since then and sent them to engineers all over the globe! Here, take a look…
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Tags: 1 Voice Beanie with Built-in Bluetooth Headphones, Aldec #12DaysofUsefulGifts giveaway, Anker Dual-Port Solar Charger, Anker Ultra Compact External Battery Charger, Etekcity Digital Laser Infrared Thermometer, Nike Air Jordan Hood Backpack Bag, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, XBOOM Ceramic Mini Portable Capsule Speaker
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Thursday, December 4th, 2014
Happy Holidays! We’ve made it to Day 4 of Aldec’s #12DaysofUsefulGifts giveaway. If you’ve been keeping up with us on Twitter and YouTube, you know that we’ve given away some fun prizes already. But that’s just the beginning, the prizes will get larger each day until the contest ends on December 12th!
If you are looking for some practical and useful gift ideas for the holidays, take a look at some of the fun prizes we’ve already given away.
To enter Aldec’s #12DaysOfUsefulGifts drawing, visit www.aldec.com/survey. There you will take a brief verification survey and automatically be entered to win. You only need to take the survey once to be eligible for daily drawings from Dec 1st-12th. You can also earn additional chances to win by sharing the contest link and viewing the daily contest video. Follow Aldec on Twitter where we will announce each day’s winner and unveil the next day’s prize. Good luck!
Tags: air vent mount for cell phones, Aldec #12DaysofUsefulGifts giveaway, aldec winning prizes, bushnell falcon 7x35 binoculars with case, grillight led bbq spatula, magisso tea cup, miles kimball manual hand held shredder, pocketmonkey wallet multi-tool, professional cleaning set for dslr cameras, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, sugru hardware sealer
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Tuesday, June 24th, 2014
 If you attended the Monday Night Reception at DAC 2014, you were greeted with a blast of 80s pop music. If you then said to yourself, “I’d like to meet the genius behind that idea” – that would be me. A few weeks before DAC, our marketing manager came to me with the task of being the DJ for the Monday night reception. As soon as I heard “DJ” I envisioned turntables, cool headphones, disco lights and all the fame that follows. My dreams were dashed a few moments later when she explained that I would only have a PA and a laptop.
Undaunted, I resolved to be the best DJ in the history of DAC Monday Night Networking Receptions. The first challenge was finding music everyone would enjoy. I naturally settled on 80s pop as my genre. I had the brilliant idea of picking a few songs from each year and playing it as a progressive 80s timeline during the evening. I changed my mind when I realized that bright idea would require some serious manual research and work.
Did I give up? Of course not. I did what any good engineer would do – I found an easy (and smart) solution that did not require substantial extra effort – a bit like re-using verification ip’s instead of making them from scratch. This level of engineering genius is often mistakenly perceived as laziness, but I like to call it being smart. In fact I recently wrote a blog on the topic of working smart not hard.
For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: Aldec, aldec 30th anniverssary, aldec 30th birthday party, dac 2014, dac chat, embedded, gopro hero3+ camera, Hardware Emulation, safety-critical, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, training, uvm, uvm methodologies, verification, vhdl verification using osvvm
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Friday, January 10th, 2014
 When I first launched Aldec in 1984, home computers hadn’t quite taken off and innovations such as the compact disk and those oversized, power draining cellphones were still struggling to obtain mass acceptance.
Fast forward 30 years, even those of us in the electronics industry have whiplash from the speed at which technology is advancing and delivering new products. Buyers are more eager to become early adopters of innovative new technology, and smarter, faster tools are required to keep pace.
As a long-time member of the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) community, Aldec has had a front row seat to the technology race and over the years we have celebrated many successes of our own. Here, our product managers reflect on some of our most memorable highlights from 2013.
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Tags: Active-HDL, aldec founder, alint, ceo, class hierarchy visualization, comprehensive fpga vendor support, debugging, debugging tools, design, documentation, dynamic object debugging, dynamic object visualization, eda, electronic design automation community, fasttrack online training, FPGA Design, global project management, hes sw, hes-7 soc/asic prototyping, IP and Training Partner community, linting, microsemi, powerful simulation performance, riviera-pro debugging tool suite, rtax/rtsx prototyping solutions, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, spec-tracer requirements lifecycle management, support for uvm, sw validation platform, uvm, uvm-based verification environments, verification, vhdl-2008 support, xilinx zynq
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Wednesday, December 11th, 2013
 Here at the Aldec corporate office, we have a sign that reminds us all of our mission in the field of Technology. It reads, ‘To deliver solutions that provide the highest productivity to value ratio; supporting our existing products while delivering innovation to current and new technologies’. We have similar statements to reaffirm our commitment in the areas of Research, Alliances, and Culture – we call it our “Aldec DNA”.
 Because we genuinely want to have a clear understanding of our user’s requirements and methodology preferences, we continually engage in surveys and interviews. The knowledge we gain better positions us to support our existing products and to deliver that support where it matters the most to our users. If you’ve ever had that frustrating experience where your favorite tool no longer supports your methodology of choice – then you understand why this is so important.
Our Commitment to the VHDL Community
When it comes to VHDL-2008, we have learned from our customers that many are happy using the methodology – and continue to successfully deliver cutting-edge technology with it. So, while we remain committed to delivering innovation to new technologies, our R&D teams also invest a great deal of development time to ensure that Aldec solutions continue to offer a high level of support for popular languages like VHDL.
For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: Active-HDL, advanced verification platform, Aldec, aldec design rule checker, aldec dna, aldec simulators, alint, bitvis, do-254/ed-80 vhdl rule plug-ins, eda industry, embedded psl, FPGA Design, functional coverage, HDL, highest productivity to value ratio, ieee, ieee 1076-1993 Standard, ieee 1076-2002 vhdl standard, ieee 1076-2008 standard, ieee standard, ieee vhdl, intelligent testbench methodology, open source vhdl verification methodology, osvvm, psl embedded in vhdl, randomization, Riviera-PRO, simulation, source encryption, standards, starc vhdl, vector implementation of integer arithmetic, verification, VHDL, vhdl community, vhdl designs, vhdl testbench, vhpi interfacing to C/C++ code
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Friday, October 18th, 2013
 The University of California, Irvine (UCI) is popular for many things, but I recall during my school days that it was distinctly known among students for its underground tunnel network. The official story is that they were simply built to house heating and cooling pipes. Yet, the rumor persists that this complex maze of underground tunnels was constructed decades ago to provide safe passage for faculty members in case of student riots.
I’ll admit I would love to uncover these tunnels someday, unfortunately they have long been sealed off from curiosity seekers. I will, however, be at the UCI campus next week unraveling a different sort of maze for engineers attending the annual International SoC Conference. Aldec is once again a Platinum Sponsor for this popular academic conference, and this year I will be joined by NEC Corporation’s Dr. Wakabayashi to present a technical session:
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Tags: asic prototyping, high level synthesis, prototyping, SoC, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, Validation, verification
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Monday, September 9th, 2013
 You look confused. Perhaps I owe you an explanation. Anyone familiar with hardware design flow knows that it starts with specification and ends with implementation. The specification in this flow is the “What” – it defines what needs to be designed. The process for implementation is the “How” – it defines how you are going to achieve it.
Let’s break down just one part of the “How” or implementation – the Design Process. For many years hand-coded RTL has been used as the de facto method for implementation and it is still being used as predominant method for designing cutting-edge hardware. But does it follow that it is the most efficient method? I would say probably not, especially given the ever-growing complexity of the hardware.
For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: Aldec, clocks, design, hand-coded rtl, hardware design flow, hierarchies, high level synthesis, hls tool, processes, rtl, SoC, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, systemc, technology, Validation, verification
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Wednesday, August 28th, 2013
 As the proud Product Manager of Aldec’s FPGA Design Simulation solution, I am excited (like it was my first Cranberries concert) to announce that Active-HDL™ is celebrating 16 years since its initial release in 1997. Active-HDL has not merely stood the test of time, it has dominated the FPGA market like a Hulk Hogan smackdown with powerful simulation performance and debugging tools.
The key to Active-HDL’s long-term success lies in Aldec’s customer-centric philosophy. Simply put, we really do listen closely to our users and invest heavily in our tools. For this reason, continued simulation performance optimizations from release to release enable users to benefit from Active-HDL’s faster simulation even as the size of FPGA designs continues to grow.
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Tags: Active-HDL, Aldec, assertions, cen, chinese electronics news, co-simulation, coverage, debugging, debugging tools, design, digital, documentation, FPGA, fpga design simulation solution, fpga designs, HDL, ieee, matlab, os-vvm, project management, semiconductor industry, simulation, simulation platform, standards, top fpga design, university, verification, verification platform, verilog, VHDL, Xilinx
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Taking a cue from the open-source community, Xilinx has launched a Tcl Store that aggregates Tcl scripts contributed by the greater development community to expand the capabilities of the Vivado® Integrated Design Environment.
