Software Tools

Synplicity Synplify® and Synplify Pro®

The Synplify tool set for logic synthesis of FPGA circuits is a new addition to the tool cabinet, as we have worked with Synplicity to obtain seats for instruction purposes.  We started using Synplify on several research projects, and had only one seat.  The results of using this tool set were quite good.  As we consider migration of our digital design instructional lab from Sun equipment to some other platform (Linux and Windows), Synplify will start to play a larger role in our architecture analysis coursework.  Visit Synplicity's web site to download a 30 day trial version of their synthesis product to your own PC or laptop if you need remote access and can't get to the PCs from outside the firewall.

Here are links to product manuals for the Synplify products.  They are located in the path for the products from the server, but I find it sometimes irritating when I can't access the PC network through the Sun server remotely from my laptop.  These are all PDF files, and they are large!! (Some on the order of 7-8 MB.)

More stuff on Synplicity tool usage:

Here is a link to a paper for a project done by one of our graduate students where they used Synplify to carry out the logic synthesis to Xilinx FPGAs for a custom computing application in Bioinformatics: Akella&Davis-2004 (PDF) in process of publication.