Hello all, I'm designing with Altera FPGA with their Quartus software. My company also have license for Mentor Graphics' Precision synthesis tool. From a
very brief check, it seems that Quartus' built-in synthesizer gives comparable results to the Precision. I wonder if there is any advantage
in using an external synthesis tool. What does it give me more than Quartus has to offer?
Thanks, Avishay
Hi Avishay, One advantage is the vendor independance. You can check the performance of your design on platforms of different vendors. Also you don't need to install different software and waste time on learning how to use it efficiently. Instead you can focus on your tool and use it with maximum efficiency. Now You are designing with Altera FPGAs, but there may come the time when you want or need to change to another Vendor.
There may be more advantages and even disadvantages (e.g. the support for the latest chips will always come with a little delay) , but the above is one major point of vendor independant software.
Have a nice synthesis Eilert
avishay schrieb:
Since you have the licenses, consider running your code on both to verify vendor independence. Quartus might save time in synthesis/place+route since it is a single tool.
-- Mike Treseler
We are also unsing Precision in here but found some naming and syntax incompatibilties as well as synthesis malfunctions with the Precision's output :-(
I'm not a too strong Mentorfan ...
Be careful what you are doing and keep an eye on the testers output...
regards
Mike Treseler schrieb:
Just a quick caution on this: Make sure you run through each respective vendor's P&R tools (with multiple seeds). The performance predictions from any synthesis tool are fundamentally limited by the lack of knowledge of real placement, routing and complete timing models.
Regards,
Paul Leventis Altera Corp.
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