( SNUG 01 Item 19 ) -------------------------------------------- [ 3/28/01 ]
Subject: "FPGA Express" vs. Synplicity vs. Exemplar
MENAGE A TOI: Right now, the FPGA synthesis market appears to be equally
split between Synopsys, Mentor, and Synplicity -- but that's shifting.
"For fiscal year 1999, I see Exemplar having 38%, Synopsys 35%, and
Synplicity 26% market share -- and I'm seeing the Synopsys number
going down and the Synplicity number going up. When you talk to
Synopsys users, they're not using FPGA Express."
- Gary Smith, Senior EDA Analyst of DataQuest
"Regarding FPGA Express vs. Synplicity and Exemplar:
We have a 0.5 million gate design, and in one of our modules we have
an 'if (expr)' condition. Now in this 'if (expr)' the '(expr)' is
so long and was dealing with 32 bit data it caused FPGA Compiler II
to crash during elaboration.
Synplicity on other hand was reliable and generated gate level logic
without crashing. One of the biggest disadvantages of Synplify was
"you can't specify multicycle paths from source to destination".
We never tried Exemplar, and heard a few opinions that it is not upto
par compared to FPGA Express and Synplify."
- Subha Pindiproli of Emulex Network Systems
"We favor Synplicity by a long shot. We were using FPGA Compiler a
while ago and were waiting 2-3 hours for a compile to finish.
Synplicity took 45 minutes with the same QOR."
- an anon engineer
"Xilinx - "www.openmore.com" - IP for FPGA users (not necessarily
vendor specific). Mentor and Synopsys created a FPGA design reuse
manual, which is at www.xilinx.com/ipcenter/designreuse/
- an anon engineer
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