SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA–Oct 12, 2006 — Altium Limited (Australia:ALU.AX), industry-leading developer of unified electronic product development solutions, today announced that Altium Designer has been enhanced to include full support for Lattice’s MachXO family of crossover programmable logic devices (PLDs). This move allows engineers to rapidly construct application hardware targeted to the popular, low cost, highly capable MachXO devices using the full power of Altium Designer’s unified design environment.
The addition of the Lattice MachXO family extends the range of Lattice devices already included with Altium Designer and joins an ever-increasing array of devices supported by the system, reinforcing Altium’s commitment to offering FPGA device- and vendor-independent solutions. This means designers can make use of an extensive range of devices using the same programmable design platform, eliminating the need to purchase additional software or specific device support modules. This also gives designers the freedom to make implementation decisions, such as final device selection, much later in the design cycle when design requirements are more fully understood.
“The unique MachXO architecture combines the fast programmability of SRAM-based FPGA technology with the security of integrated flash configuration to offer a level of performance beyond the capabilities of traditional CPLDs, with the flexibility of an FPGA,” stated Tim Schnettler, Lattice Director Design Tools Marketing. “Altium Designer’s unified architecture combined with the unique features of MachXO opens up exciting possibilities for our customers, such as additional design flexibility and faster time to market.”
Altium Designer is the first design system to bring together hardware, software and programmable hardware design within a single, unified environment. It includes an extensive set of ready-to-use ‘soft’ components that can be used to target a wide range of programmable devices, including the MachXO. Developers can even implement small processors, such as Altium Designer’s TSK165 soft-core RISC processor, within MachXO devices.
Altium Designer also includes a range of ‘virtual instruments’ that can be added to circuitry at the schematic level and implemented inside the target device on a suitable development board. These instruments connect to soft front panels within the system to allow an interactive approach to be taken to programmable logic design, minimizing the need for extensive and time-consuming HDL simulation.
“MachXO bridges the gap between CPLDs and FPGAs, making them extremely useful devices,” says Nick Martin, founder and CEO of Altium Limited. “The versatility of these devices complements the unified nature of the Altium Designer environment and the introduction of support for the MachXO family brings even greater flexibility to engineers developing systems with Altium Designer.”
Pricing and availability
Support for the Lattice MachXO family of crossover programmable logic devices (PLDs) is now available in the latest version of Altium Designer — Altium Designer 6.5. Altium Designer 6.5 is available for purchase through Altium’s sales and support centers worldwide. For information on pricing and flexible product licensing options, customers should contact their local Altium sales and support center. Details can be found at www.altium.com/contacts.
About Altium Designer
Altium Designer is the industry’s only electronics product development system that removes the barriers imposed by disparate design flows and unifies the different design disciplines involved in electronics product development — the design of the hardware, the programmable hardware and the embedded software. Altium Designer’s unified design environment means users can harness the potential of the latest electronics technologies, and move to a ‘soft’ design methodology without the need to acquire specialist programmable device expertise. This provides companies with increased design flexibility, reduced production costs and speeds time to market. Altium Designer also delivers the freedom to move between any device, from any vendor, at any time and lowers total cost of ownership by eliminating the need to integrate extra-cost add-ons to increase functionality, or make up a complete solution. For more information, please visit www.altium.com/Products/AltiumDesigner/.
About Altium
Altium Limited (Australia:ALU.AX) is the industry’s leading developer of electronic product development solutions dedicated to unifying the different design disciplines involved in electronics product development. Altium products ensure all electronic engineers, designers, developers, and their organizations, take maximum advantage of emerging design technologies to bring smarter products to market faster and easier. Founded in 1985, Altium is headquartered in Sydney, Australia with sales offices in the United States, Europe, Japan, China, and resellers in all other major markets. For more information, visit us at www.altium.com.
About Lattice Semiconductor
Lattice Semiconductor Corporation provides the industry’s broadest range of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and Programmable Logic Devices (PLD), including Field Programmable System Chips (FPSC), Complex Programmable Logic Devices (CPLD), Programmable Mixed-Signal Products (ispPAC®) and Programmable Digital Interconnect Devices (ispGDX®). Lattice also offers industry leading SERDES products. Lattice is “Bringing the Best Together” with comprehensive solutions for system design, including an unequaled portfolio of non-volatile programmable devices that deliver instant-on operation, security and “single chip solution” space savings. For more information about Lattice Semiconductor Corporation, visit www.latticesemi.com.
Altium, Altium Designer, LiveDesign, NanoBoard and their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Altium Limited or its subsidiaries. ‘Lattice’ and ‘MachXO’ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lattice Semiconductor Corporation. All other registered or unregistered trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners, and no trademark rights to the same are claimed.