CriticalBlue releases coprocessor synthesis tool

CriticalBlue (Edinburgh, Scotland) announced its mission and its plan for Cascade CriticalBlue CEO. He identified ST Microelectronics as a customer, but acknowledged there are no tapeouts yet. While CriticalBlue is not looking for a large number of engagements, he said, it is seeking additional projects and companies who want to try the new approach.

Working in conjunction with Synplicity, Steward said, CriticalBlue verified the ability to pass synthesis and simulation data to that company's SynplifyPro and Synplify ASIC tools. Most significantly, he said, the results predicted by Cascade matched the FPGA and ASIC implementations that were produced downstream.

While the basic description of Cascade has not changed since May 2003, the company's positioning is somewhat different, Stewart said.

"Last year at DAC [Design Automation Conference] we were put in the ESL [electronic system level] bucket," Stewart said. "But as we talked to customers throughout the year, we came to the conclusion that we were actually part of the implementation flow. Executable code in the software domain is like RTL in the hardware domain. So we're migrating from one implementation format to another."