HARDI Electronics Unveils its Latest High Speed FPGA Board for ASIC Prototyping at DAC (Booth #1439)

The new single FPGA board, equipped with a Xilinx Virtex-II Pro™ device, has close to 1000 I/Os -- including LVDS pairs, global clocks and Multi-Gigabit transceivers

DAC CONFERENCE -- SAN DIEGO, CA -- JUNE 7, 2004
HARDI Electronics AB, a pioneer in high performance ASIC prototyping, today announced the availability of a new daughter board in the HAPS family that will give customers access to multi-gigabit serial links and embedded PowerPC processors. The new board, FPGAPRO_2x3, will be shown for the first time at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Diego, Calif., June 7-10 (HARDI Booth #1439).

The FPGAPRO_2x3 board can be used as a stand-alone to prototype ASIC designs up to 1 million ASIC gates or as an add-on to HAPS multi-FPGA boards when higher capacity is needed. Two or more FPGAPRO_2x3 boards can also be stacked on top of each other or connected together with high-speed ribbon coax cables. All HAPS add-on boards such as memories, communication, I/O and connector boards are compatible with FPGAPRO_2x3.

The new board uses either one Xilinx Virtex-II Pro XC2VP70 or XC2VP100 in the largest package, offering 20 multi-gigabit serial links, two embedded PowerPC processors and close to 1000 user I/Os. Over 700 of these I/Os can be used in differential mode (LVDS), enabling long distance drive capability at transmission rates exceeding 800 Mb/s per channel.

The user I/Os are divided into three groups with separate power, which means that three different I/O voltages can be used at the same time. Programming is done via a standard JTAG interface, from an onboard re-programmable Flash memory or from the HAPS module CONF_1x1. As with all HAPS boards, the data programmed into the FPGA can be encrypted by a battery-backed encryption key. All necessary voltages are generated locally from a single external 5V source.

"FPGAPRO_2X3 is designed to interface efficiently with our PCIX board, both mechanically and electrically," stated Jonas Nilsson, technical manager of HAPS. "These two boards fit together in an ordinary PCI/PCIX backplane. If the single FPGA isn't big enough for the whole design, the designer can place parts of his design close to the PCI bus while the rest resides on an ordinary HAPS board or a second FPGAPRO_2X3. The RocketIO channels are very efficient for rapid data transfer between the boards."

For photos of the new daughter board, please visit:
http://www.synplicity.com/products/haps/gallery.html

About HAPS
HAPS (HARDI ASIC Prototyping System) is the first modular FPGA board system providing high speed, high capacity, real-time debugging and full ASIC functionality for ASIC prototyping designers. The system is composed of multi-FPGA motherboards and standard or user developed daughter boards. To accommodate very large designs, users can connect several mother­boards in many different ways. HAPS boards give designers virtually the same functionality as the ASIC, at speeds approaching that of the ASIC.

HAPS’ modular approach makes it one of the most flexible prototyping systems available today. HAPS adds functionality by allowing designers to place daughter boards anywhere in the system, whereas most prototyping systems have fixed features that cannot be moved. HAPS addresses critical issues regarding the prototyping board design such as cross-talk, signal integrity, impedance matches, connectivity problems, size and speed and gives the designer more time to spend on the actual ASIC design rather than the FPGA board.

About Synplicity
Synplicity®, Inc. (Nasdaq: SYNP) is a leading supplier of innovative software and hardware solutions for the design and verification of semiconductors that serve a wide range of communications, military/aerospace, consumer, semiconductor, computer, and other electronic systems markets. Synplicity's tools provide outstanding performance, cost and time-to-market benefits by simplifying, improving and automating design planning, logic synthesis and physical synthesis for FPGA and DSP designs, as well as at-speed verification and prototyping for ASIC & ASSP designs. Synplicity is the number one supplier of FPGA synthesis solutions and has been rated #1 in customer satisfaction since 2004 in EE Times' Annual FPGA Customer Survey. Synplicity products support industry-standard design languages (VHDL and Verilog) and run on popular platforms. The company operates in over 20 facilities worldwide and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information visit http://www.synplicity.com.

###

Synplicity is a registered trademark of Synplicity Inc. All other brands or products are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their owners

For more information, contact:

HARDI Electronics	HighPointe Communications	PrismaPR
Bo Nilsson	Barbara Marker (US PR)	Bettina Lerchenmuller (European PR)
+46-46 16 29 00	+503-209-2323	+49-8106-24-72-33