( DAC 04 Item 11 ) --------------------------------------------- [ 02/09/05 ]
Subject: Magma Blast FPGA and Blast SA
THEY DO THAT? -- Not to be left out, Magma has tool offerings in the FPGA
synthesis and in the "next wave" Structured ASIC market. Yea, I did a
double take there, too. "Huh? Magma does FPGA stuff? What did you say?"
Magma's Blast FPGA and Blast SA products: Its biggest strength is
physical awareness. Its biggest weakness is it only supports a
limited number of Structured ASIC platforms.
It is worth mentioning the common flow with ASIC for the frontend,
which can help in the product development from prototype to volume
production. (This is from the DAC demo.)
- Ajay Khoche of Agilent
Concerning Magma's Blast FPGA/SA (Structured ASIC) demo:
I'm glad to see another major player focusing on the FPGA market.
The hurdles for Magma may be higher than they expect. I hope that they
have a strong stomach. I have found that the constraints imposed by
FPGAs cause unexpected headaches for EDA vendors. It'll be interesting
to see if Magma is still pursuing the FPGA market at DAC next year.
I would encourage Magma to work closely with both Altera and Xilinx.
I'm more interested in having (and willing to pay for) better tools for
FPGA development than having a common flow for both FPGAs and ASICs.
The only potential interest I have in Structured ASICs is what the FPGA
vendors are offering. EDA vendors interested in the SA market should
be working with the big FPGA vendors.
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
I started working with Magma's Blast Fusion while supporting our ChipX
Structured ASIC technology. I found the tool very friendly and easy
to use. Its Tcl environment allows easy bypass and workarounds for
most problems, and its GUI interface make debugging easier.
What most impressed me about Magma was the high level of support and
willingness for modifying the database and even adding special command
in the tool itself for supporting our Structured ASIC.
We are only in the beginning, and more work ahead of us, I'm positive
that Magma's tool suit will enable us to perform fast and quality
tape-outs on our architecture.
- Lior Amarilio of ChipX Israel
Unified FPGA physical synthesis for was the most noteworthy claim of
Magma Blast FPGA. Its biggest strength is their capability for big
FPGAs. Their weakness is they just started.
- Hidenori Konishi of Spinnaker systems
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