– National Semiconductor Korea (CEO: Choi Chung-won) today unveiled WEBENCH® FPGA Power Architect, the industry's first design tool capable of modeling and optimizing power supplies for FPGAs in minutes.
WEBENCH FPGA Power Architect includes detailed power requirements for over 130 of the latest FPGA devices recently released by companies such as Altera and Xilinx. Modern power supply systems, including those for advanced FPGAs, are complex to design, as they require the introduction of multiple proprietary leads to drive voltages of precise specifications. In addition to voltage and current requirements, each load may have limited characteristic ranges in ripple, noise filtering, synchronization, and supply isolation, as well as in startup definition (soft startup).
The power supply designs provided by WEBENCH fully and comprehensively address the formal requirements for power set by FPGA manufacturers, so designers can be confident that the power supply meets these constraints while saving valuable time during the design process.
“Xilinx has invested significantly in simplifying power supply and power distribution system requirements for FPGAs. The technical excellence of National Semiconductor’s newly launched WEBENCH FPGA Power Architect further reduces the burden of design work, helping customers launch products faster and reduce board spin and debugging costs,” said Jameel Hussein, Power and Configuration Technology Marketing Manager at Xilinx.
When a designer selects an advanced FPGA from Altera or Xilinx to begin the design, this tool identifies core and I/O options corresponding to all possible loads on the array and automatically inputs unique power requirements. Once the designer finishes additional adjustments, WEBENCH collects all loads and generates multiple power supply architectures as options to drive the FPGA and the entire system.
Phil Gibson, Vice President of Technical Sales Tools at National Semiconductor, stated, “Real systems involve complex parts that do not simply end at the FPGA.”