Software speeds debugging of FPGA designs

17 October 2007 Analogue, Mixed Signal, LSI

Tektronix and First Silicon Solutions (FS2), a division of MIPS Technologies, have developed FPGAView software for configuring and realtime debugging of Altera and Xilinx FPGA devices using the recently released Tektronix MSO4000 Series mixed signal oscilloscopes.

The new MSO4000 family of mixed signal oscilloscopes combines three powerful capabilities - an advanced realtime oscilloscope, logic analyser and the breakthrough Wave Inspector waveform search engine - into one small and lightweight portable device for embedded design and debug. In addition to the MSO4000, FPGAView is also available for the Tektronix TLA5000 and TLA7000 Logic Analysers.

The once tedious process of defining and routing the FPGA signals to the external logic analyser connector, and mapping channels for the MSO or logic analyser, are now handled by the FPGAView software. Using FPGAView, design engineers can quickly and easily measure signals inside their Altera and Xilinx FPGA design and select which group of internal signals to probe without having to recompile their design. The program also automatically updates the MSO or TLA logic analyser channel names with the internal FPGA signal names selected.

FPGAView runs on a host Windows-based PC and communicates with the MSO over Ethernet or a USB link, in conjunction with the TekVISA OpenChoice Instrument Manager software. For the Tektronix Logic Analyser (TLA) family, the FPGAView software can either run on the analyser or on a separate PC that communicates with the TLA over Ethernet.

The FPGAView software package works with any version of MSO4000 series software and Tektronix TLA5000 or TLA7000 series with Tektronix logic analyser software version 4.3 or later. Altera FPGAView requires the appropriate JTAG probe for programming the Altera FPGA, either a First Silicon Solutions System Navigator probe, or Altera ByteBlaster or USB Blaster. It also requires the use of Altera Quartus II 5.1 or later for the Logic Analyser Interface (LAI). Xilinx FPGAView requires a Xilinx Platform Cable USB programming cable and Xilinx ISE ISE 8.2i or later.

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