Forte Rolls Out Latest Version of High-Level Synthesis Software

Enhancements include Tool Scalability, Quality of Results and IP

SAN JOSE, CALIF. -- October 29, 2012 -- Forte Design Systems™, a leading provider of software products that enable design at a higher level of abstraction and improve design results, today announced immediate availability of the latest version of its Cynthesizer™ SystemC high-level synthesis (HLS).

Enhancements, including increases to Cynthesizer's performance and capacity, have been made across the entire tool suite to enable designs to be done faster and with better results. The latest features include new modeling style support, expanded optimization and analysis capabilities, integration with third-party tools and improvements to CynWare™ intellectual property (IP) cores.

"We continue to focus on delivering high-value synthesis software driven by customer needs," states Brett Cline, Forte's vice president of marketing and sales. "Cynthesizer 4.3 provides significant improvements in power results and ease of use while expanding our leading CynWare IP library, allowing design teams to quickly adopt high-level synthesis and get great results."

New Features, Capabilities

Cynthesizer 4.3 has a number of new features to make it easier to model designs and quickly synthesize to the register transfer level (RTL) with great results. For instance, Cynthesizer now supports the synthesis of the standard C++ math library "<complex>" in addition to the CynWare fixed point data types. This modeling technique maintains precision throughout complex computations in the high-level SystemC design and creates optimized RTL code through the HLS process. Cynthesizer 4.3 adds support for asynchronous zero-latency memories in addition to the extensive memory capabilities built into the product.

The use of C++ templates and virtual functions has been expanded for defining module structure and behavior to allow users to express design intent at a higher level, reducing the amount of code required and increasing reusability. Cynthesizer supports the use of the standard math libraries with C/C++ and SystemC datatypes.

Improvements have been made to the Cynthesizer Workbench™ (CynthWB) environment, including formatting and filtering of tabular reports and the ability to link objects to the call stack to improve debugging and optimizing of the design. Support has been added for asynchronous external memories, along with variable accesses to arrays of external memories, register banks and memories to support more design styles and provide better results. Large projects will load quickly in CynthWB and navigation through analysis data is faster. The layout for analyzing synthesis results has been improved, and an analysis capability that compares quality of results (QoR) of two selected cynthConfigs is included.

Forte's CynWare IP library and CynWare Interface Generator™ have been updated to improve quality of results and usability. In a power saving move, the CynWare Line Buffer IP interface now allows memory reads to be avoided for unneeded rows or columns. To improve performance and prevent avoidable pipeline stalls, CynWare FIFOs implemented with single-ported memories have an extra buffer register to decouple the synthesized design from the FIFOs internal read-write cadence.

In keeping with a commitment to delivering a seamless integration with downstream design tools, Forte integrated Cynthesizer with the Cadence® Incisive® Enterprise Simulator and the SimVision debugging environment, and Oasys Design Systems' RealTime Designer™ to link high-level synthesis to chip synthesis.

Finally, Cynthesizer now supports mapping arrays in a design to either a flattened set of registers or a memory, and maps arrays to a register bank for improved capacity and runtime. Designs with large register banks can be mapped directly to a register bank instead of flattening the array.

Availability

The latest version Cynthesizer is shipping now.

For more information, go to: www.ForteDS.com.

About Forte Design Systems

Forte Design Systems is a leading provider of software products that enable design at a higher level of abstraction and improve design results. Its innovative synthesis technologies and intellectual property offerings allow design teams creating complex electronic chips and systems to reduce their overall design and verification time. More than half of the top 20 worldwide semiconductor companies use Forte's products in production today for ASIC, SoC and FPGA design. Forte is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with additional offices in England, Japan, Korea and the United States. For more information, visit www.ForteDS.com.