Mentor and Xilinx to collaborate

Mentor Graphics Corporation today announced a collaboration with Xilinx to supply the Expedition(tm) and PADS(r) users with reference data which allows them to more efficiently implement the multi-gigabit transceiver (MGT) technology available in Xilinx advanced field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) on their printed circuit board (PCB) designs. To ensure optimal multi-gigabit interconnect implementation, Mentor Graphics has teamed up with Xilinx to provide the Virtex-II Pro RocketIO MGT characterization board reference design for the PADS and Expedition product families. "The Xilinx reference designs enable our Expedition and PADS customers to accelerate their design process, improve design quality and achieve optimal system performance. Today, system designers are faced with significant chip to board implementation challenges, such as increased FPGA densities and speeds in the multi-gigabit per second ranges," said Henry Potts, vice president and general manager, Systems Design Division, Mentor Graphics. "These reference designs enable easy integration of complex FPGAs onto the PCB." Preconfigured design data can immediately be implemented in customer design flows, saving hours of library set up time, significantly reducing design time and improving system quality versus having to develop all this data from scratch. Supported by Mentor Graphics, the design kit includes a reference PCB layout and a part library that include symbols and footprints. Complimentary RocketIO signal integrity models are also available for Mentor Graphics(r) HyperLynx(r) and ICX(r) products.