GateRocket Ships Advanced FPGA Verification Solution for Virtex-5 FPGA

- GateRocket® Inc. today announced availability of its RocketDrive® for Virtex®-5 FPGAs from Xilinx. The RocketDrive cuts verification and in-system debug time for advanced single or multi-FPGA based projects while adding significant value through seamless integration to a design team’s existing design verification environment, without a change in design flow or verification methodology.

“Xilinx Virtex-5 devices are the industry’s predominant high-performance FPGAs and in many instances are being used to replace ASICs in applications such as wireless networking, imaging, defense and more,” said GateRocket President and CEO Dave Orecchio. “The RocketDrive’s ability to speed verification, debug and time-to-market of products using FPGA devices will further increase the penetration of Virtex-5 FPGAs because it eliminates the verification bottleneck and significantly reduces in-system debug time.”

“GateRocket’s support for our Virtex-5 FPGAs, including the newly available Virtex-5 SX240T and Virtex-5 FX200T devices, enables companies to bring sophisticated products to market faster while benefiting from the technical innovation that the Virtex-5 product family delivers to system architects,” said Tom Feist, senior marketing director of the Xilinx ISE® Design Suite. “The more advanced designs get, the more important new verification technologies become. We are happy to have GateRocket as a partner focused in this space.”

Product: The RocketDrive is a faster and more accurate verification and debugging solution for FPGAs than traditional software-only approaches. It offers the ability to exhaustively verify and debug an FPGA design before committing to production. This is accomplished by exposing bugs that would normally only be found in the lab much earlier in the design phase, enabling shorter product development times, higher product quality and improved product performance.

The RocketDrive helps speed time to market through:

• Rapid, deterministic, debug with functional fault root-cause identification in HDL source

• Simulation acceleration for both design and regressions development phases

• 3rd party IP block validation by comparison of simulation models and FPGA hardware

• FPGA design team gains module HDL level, hardware validation, before integration

• Capture hidden simulation model, synthesis and place & route tool chain faults easily

The solution is very powerful since it allows the designer complete flexibility to place any portions of the FPGA design into the RocketDrive and seamlessly integrate it within the verification platform. This allows the FPGA to be used natively to (1) speed verification by replacing FPGA software models with actual hardware; (2) investigate hardware bugs and test alternatives; and (3) run application level software against a Device Native® representation of the design.

The RocketDrive takes minutes to install in any Linux PC and integrates seamlessly with the user’s existing design and verification environment. The RocketDrive complements software design tools from the leading design automation tool vendors including Cadence Design Systems (CDNS), Mentor Graphics Corp. (MENT), Synopsys, Inc. (SNPS), Synplicity, Inc., and the FPGA vendor tools.

Pricing and Availability:
Virtex-5 RocketDrives are immediately available for all three device types and are priced at $45,000 for a perpetual use license. RocketDrives employ the largest device in each family so that the drive can be used on a multitude of projects.

• RD311 for designs with the LX330T device
• RD312 for designs with the SX240T device
• RD314 for designs with the FX200T device

GateRocket, Inc., located in Bedford, Mass., offers electronic engineers the first Device Native verification and debug solution for advanced FPGA semiconductor devices. The company’s RocketDrive enables users to verify and debug advanced FPGA designs faster and with higher quality for greatly improved time to market, and more reliable results. Learn more about GateRocket online at http://www.gaterocket.com.

About Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs:
Named 'Product and Innovation of the Year' by EDN Magazine, the Virtex-5 family represents the fifth generation in the award-winning Virtex series. Built upon the industry's most advanced 65nm triple-oxide technology, breakthrough new ExpressFabric(TM) technology and proven ASMBL(TM) architecture, the Virtex-5 family includes four domain-optimized platforms for high-speed logic, digital signal processing (DSP), embedded processing and serial connectivity applications. Production devices are shipping now and may be purchased online or through Xilinx distributors. Visit http://www.xilinx.com/virtex5 for more information.