Aptix introduces product line with new options for pre-silicon prototyping

Target Neutral Prototyping Supports
Reconfigurable Prototyping Platforms and “Roll Your Own” System Prototypes

SAN JOSE, Calif.  November 11, 2002 - Aptix Corporation, a supplier of System-on-Chip (SoC) prototyping software and hardware, today announced a new product line--Aptix Prototype Studio™.

Aptix Prototype Studio extends the benefits of Aptix proven prototyping technology to developers of custom multi-FPGA printed circuit boards (PCBs) and incorporates support for Aptix traditional prototyping productsSystem Explorer™ and Software Integration Station™ (SIS). It provides a complete RTL to pre-silicon prototype (PSP) flow, regardless of whether the target is a hardwired or reconfigurable PSP.

 “We are leaders in the SoC prototyping market, and our customers have asked us to extend our prototyping product line to include prototyping flows that give them powerful, cost effective, hardware target neutral options for their SoC prototypes, and help with the design of a SoC’s hardware/software interface,” remarked Charlie Miller, Sr. VP of Marketing and Business Development at Aptix. “With Aptix Prototype Studio, our customers can use a common prototyping flow and database for both our reconfigurable platforms and custom hardwired multi-FPGA printed circuit boards.”

Miller added, “We also changed our pricing model to allow multi-discipline design teams to use our Software Integration Station’s reconfigurable prototyping platforms on a time-based, term pricing basis. Our customers now have the advantage of ‘instant’ prototypes at about the same price as a custom hardwired PCB.”

Aptix Prototype Studio, which includes Aptix Design Pilot®, supports partitioning a monolithic SoC design across multiple FPGA devices, working within the pin constraints of the FPGAs, mapping SoC constructs like gated clocks into structures more appropriate for FPGAs, and debugging with the PSP when problems are uncovered in the design.

Xilinx Support, Customer Acceptance
Aptix Prototype Studio supports the latest, state-of-the-art FPGA devices from Xilinx. Ivo Bolsens, CTO at Xilinx, said, “Aptix’ RTL to PCB flow offers state-of-the-art automation with outstanding quality-of-results (QoR) with its built-in Xilinx technology. We are pleased that Aptix has found Xilinx Virtex II FPGAs to offer the best solution for its customers' multi-FPGA prototyping needs.”

"We used Aptix Design Pilot software to quickly map our network gateway SoC design into FPGA technology for a pre-silicon prototype that helped us achieve first-pass success with our last chip,” said Eric Lee, Vice President, IC technology, at Silicon Data, Inc. “We are using Aptix Prototype Studio in our current project to help design and produce a quantity of custom FPGA-based printed circuit boards so we can deliver early pre-silicon prototypes to our software development team."

New Product Line Up, PCB link
Aptix Prototype Studio is available in three forms. Aptix Prototype Studio/PCB™ is available to designers targeting only hardwired PCBs. Aptix Prototype Studio/Pro™ supports Aptix traditional reconfigurable prototyping productsSystem Explorer and Software Integration Station. Aptix Prototype Studio/Enterprise™ supports all hardware targets.

The link from the Aptix prototype database to a hardwired PCB utilizes FPGA Connector from Translogic BV (Ede, The Netherlands). This link includes the automatic creation of homogeneous and heterogeneous symbols necessary to interface to industry standard schematic editors, which reduces the tedious setup requirements for symbol creation into a mere matter of minutes. The link converts HDL descriptions into pin constraints for FPGAs and includes version management to ensure database consistency and accuracy. This use model promotes parallel engineering efficiency for schematic entry, FPGA place-and-route and board layout. With an up-to-date FPGA library, Tcl scripting for design iterations, and extensive export formats for maximum schematic interface flexibility, Aptix now provides a complete RTL to CAD-ready mapping flow.

"FPGA Connector incorporates our accumulated knowledge of FPGA to board development in an easy-to-use software program. FPGA Connector solves the real-world problems encountered by developers who target hardwired printed circuit boards. We are pleased that Aptix will incorporate our product in Aptix Prototype Studio. FPGA Connector offers a unique process of moving through the design flow, from the top-level HDL description to the PCB level symbol, as well as to the physical pin information, necessary for the FPGA place-and-route tools,” said Tom Hassink, Director of Sales, Translogic.

Pricing and Availability
Aptix Prototype Studio/PCB is provided as a time-based software license. Pricing begins at $79,500 for a one-year license. Aptix Prototype Studio products are shipping now.

About Aptix
Aptix Corporation is a leading provider of high-performance pre-silicon prototype (PSP) solutions to System-on-Chip (SoC) developers, enabling them to accelerate their time-to-market, reduce costs and improve their product performance. Aptix’ reconfigurable and portable PSPs enable hardware developers to integrate custom logic and to verify and debug complex SoC designs in a real-world environment and software developers to accelerate the firmware and application software development timeline. In addition, these flexible prototypes can be deployed for field-testing and to multiple customers for evaluation, providing a development head start. Visit Aptix on the web at http://www.aptix.com.

Aptix is headquartered at 1338 Ridder Park Drive, San Jose, CA 95131, Tel: (408) 573-5200, Fax: (408) 573-4900.

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Aptix® , the Aptix logo and Design Pilot are registered trademarks of Aptix Corporation.
Aptix Prototype Studio, Aptix Prototype Studio/PCB, Aptix Prototype Studio/Pro and Aptix Prototype Studio/Enterprise are trademarks of Aptix Corporation.
FPGA Connector is a trademark of Translogic BV.
Virtex II is a trademark of Xilinx.
All other trademarks are tradenames are the property of their respective owners.