Xilinx offers migration kit to Altera customers

Xilinx offers migration kit to Altera customers
By Michael Santarini, EE Times
May 1, 2001 (12:43 p.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010430S0105

SAN MATEO, Calif. — Xilinx Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) will introduce an Altera-to-Xilinx design migration kit this week that will allow users of Altera Corp. parts and Max+plus II software to transfer their designs to Xilinx's Integrated Synthesis Environment (ISE) tool flow. As an incentive, Xilinx is offering a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate to any user who demonstrates a faster run time in an Altera device created with Altera's Quartus II software versus a competing Xilinx part.

The migration kit is targeted to Max+plus II customers because "most Altera customers are still using Altera's older Max+plus II software," said Richard Sevcik, Xilinx senior vice president of software. Sevcik said that Altera customers should already have copies of Quartus II or can get a trial version from Altera. "I think Max+plus II users will also find that [it] is easier to port their designs to ISE than it is to port them to Quartus II," he added.

After a d isappointing first quarter, Altera admitted this month that it lost ground to Xilinx in part because of the slower place and route compile times of Altera's Quartus I PLD design software. But Altera is publicly claiming that it has surpassed Xilinx compile times with Quartus II.

Altera now claims that Quartus II compile times are the fastest in the industry and that resulting design performance, measured in the frequency achieved, also increases when compared with earlier software.

In addition to details on the gift certificate offer, the Xilinx kit includes documentation and a demo on how Altera Max+plus II customers can migrate their designs to Xilinx ISE flows. The kit also includes a voucher offering Altera users a $500 discount on the purchase of Xilinx's ISE Elite product, which the company sells for $3,495. Rules of the program are located at the Xilinx Web site.