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The various implementation and debug tools were described in chapter 3 but as a recap, a number of software tools are needed to map and implement the SoC into FPGAs. All tools come with their respective design environment or GUI, but can also be invoked from a command line or a script so that the whole implementation sequence can then be more efficiently run without supervision, for example, overnight.

The time taken to run the design through the tools will vary according to a number of factors including complexity, size and performance targets as we shall see below but runtime will always benefit from using more capable workstations and multiple tools in parallel. Readers may have some experience of FPGA design from earlier years, where a PC running Microsoft Windows ® would suffice for any project. Today, however, our EDA tools used for prototyping are almost exclusively run on Linux-based workstations with more than 16Gbytes of RAM available for each process. This is mostly driven by the size of designs and blocks being processed and in particular, FPGA place & route is generally run on the whole design in one pass. With today’s FPGA databases having some millions of instances, this becomes a large processing exercise for a serious workstation.

In addition, we can increase our productivity by running multiple copies of a tool in parallel, running on separate workstation processors. For example, the synthesis and place & route on the different FPGAs after partitioning could be run in parallel so that the total runtime of the implementation would be governed only by that FPGA with the longest runtime.

XC5202-5VQ100C

Manufacturer:Xilinx
FPGA XC5200 Family 3K Gates 256 Cells 83MHz 0.5um Technology 5V 100-Pin VTQFP
Product Categories: FPGAs

Lifecycle:Obsolete -

RoHS: No RoHS

XC2064-70PD48C

Manufacturer:Xilinx
LOGIC CELL ARRAY Field Programmable Gate Array
Product Categories:

Lifecycle:Obsolete -

RoHS: No RoHS

XC4020XL-3PQ208C

Manufacturer:Xilinx
FPGA XC4000X Family 20K Gates 1862 Cells 0.35um Technology 3.3V 208-Pin PQFP
Product Categories: FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Array)

Lifecycle:Obsolete -

RoHS: No RoHS

XC5202-6TQ144C

Manufacturer:Xilinx
FPGA XC5200 Family 3K Gates 256 Cells 83MHz 0.5um Technology 5V 144-Pin TQFP
Product Categories:

Lifecycle:Obsolete -

RoHS: No RoHS

XCR3960-7BG492C

Manufacturer:Xilinx
Xilinx BGA
Product Categories:

Lifecycle:Any -

RoHS: -

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