Design software takes in latest FPGA developments

The Nexar system design software suite has been updated to support v4.2 of Altera's Quartus II development software.

Altium's Nexar system design software has been updated to support v4.2 of Altera's Quartus II development software.

Nexar is a complete FPGA-based digital design system and supports a wide range of Altera PLDs.

Taking advantage of the Quartus II v4.2 software's industry-leading synthesis and place-and-route technology, Nexar customers can achieve the highest possible performance when using Altera devices in their designs.

Nexar allows the interactive development of complete systems, including processor-based designs, on an FPGA platform.

The Nexar design methodology - LiveDesign - enables real-time communication with active devices in the circuit, such as processor cores and virtual instruments, that are running inside the target FPGA.

Along with Altium's NanoBoard, a versatile FPGA development board that features swappable target devices housed on removable daughter boards, Nexar allows interactive, "live" development and debugging of systems without the need for simulation at the system level, significantly reducing system development time.

"Supporting Altera's Quartus II software ensures that our Nexar customers have access to the best place-and-route and synthesis technology so that they can get the most out of their Altera FPGA-based designs", said Nick Martin, Joint CEO and founder of Altium.

James Smith, Director of EDA Vendor Relations at Altera Corp, said: "Altium's support for the Quartus II development software in its Nexar software demonstrates the growing success of Altera products across broad market segments".

"As the only development tool that supports FPGA, CPLD and structured ASIC designs, the Quartus II software allows Altium customers to easily target their prototyping and production solutions using our programmable logic devices".

Support for Altera's Quartus II v4.2 will be available with the release of Service Pack 2 from 13th December 2004, for free download from the Altium website for all Nexar 2004 and Protel 2004 licences.

Nexar is priced at Eur 7995 for a new licence.

A Unified Nexar-Protel 2004 software licence is also available, providing complete FPGA-PCB systems development, and is priced at Eur 9995.

Protel 2004 users can upgrade their existing licence to this system from Eur 2995.

Altium's NanoBoard is priced at Eur 995 and is currently delivered with two daughterboards including the Altera Cyclone.

A wide range of additional daughterboards, including the Altera Stratix with SRAM, Altera Cyclone with SRAM and the Altera Max 3000/7000 devices are also available.

For developers wanting to evaluate Nexar, LiveDesign Evaluation Kits are now available and prices start from Eur 49.

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