synthesis - design compiler or synplify pro?

Synplify Pro will give you better results.

Cheers, Jon

Last I heard, Synopsys end-of-lifed their FPGA synthesis product. Merciful end to a pitiful product.

Andy

any review articles comparing those two products? pointers to those articles would be greatly appreciated.

Synplify Pro only works for FPGAs

Synopsys DC only works for ASICS.

What's to compare? Synplify Pro has better language coverage for VHDL, but other than that, it all boils down to the features of the target implementation, and not so much about the tool.

Back when Synopsys FPGA Compiler II was around we compared it to Synplify Pro, targeting Xilinx FPGAs, and SP won hands down in QOR, run time, ease of use, language (vhdl) coverage, virtually everything, including cost. I don't recall a single category that FC2 beat SP. There were a handful of corner cases where FC2 gave a better (faster/ smaller) implementation than SP, but there were many more for which the SP implementation was better than FC2.

Andy

Thanks for your inputs, Andy. From your comments, it looks like I am using the right tool, I've recently found a problem (not quite sure whether it is a "feature" ) with Synplify Pro. The latest version of Synplify Pro [8.8.0.4] overconstraints the timing of the design and the 8.4 version had the problem of confusing itself with DIFFM/DIFFS and IOB, the idea of comparing those two tools was to find a backup when one tool fails I can still try the other one.

If it fails, get straight on to support. That's what you paid all that money for.

Cheers, Jon