Well, last week I think I saw it in the form of an all-in-one application that takes a design concept and implements it in a system containing an FPGA, includes everything to take you from concept to manufacturing, including IP, software, printed circuit board etc.  But wait I hear you say – Falcon was a disaster that almost brought Mentor down. Well, this is no disaster even though it does resemble it a lot, such as a unified database, single application and a major new development for the company. This is in late stages of beta testing and their customers appear to be going wild about it. So who am I talking about? Well it is Altium – that small company based in Australia that wants to change the way that people view EDA, that wants to make advanced tools available to everyone, and thinks they can do it with a $5000 price tag! No, that is not an entry price – they have no extra charges for this or that, it is $5k for the entire tool suite. No, it is not second rate technology; they are stealing customers away from the big guys left right and center! No, it is not for a week; that is the cost of a perpetual license.

So the Altium release 10 should be available in the September/October timeframe, which is just around the corner, and they claim it is the only product that combines FPGA, PCB, embedded software and IP. They claimed to have got over 800 new customers in the past year and I asked if they believed this was due to people looking for cheaper products during a recessionary period. They pulled out the figures that showed that price was only a marginal factor. In fact on 14% of them, in a survey, said that price was a major consideration. The number one reason was the unified platform, followed closely by features. And why is the unified platform so important – well you see, 84% of them said that their productivity doubled or more. Now when was the last time you spent $5k and got a doubling of your productivity?

I was still a little skeptical about this single database and executable, so I pressed that issue a little more. They talked about one example of versioning. Most systems out there are file based, so you can version a file and keep track of it. You can check out a file, modify it and check it back in, but with a database system, you can check out any arbitrary part of a schematic, layout or code, or you can take a snapshot of the entire design database and not have to worry if you have all of the right pieces. Even when a piece of the system is checked out, tests are still being executed to see if what you do would violate any of the rules of the system or checks.

Another aspect of this system is the way in which it binds the system together. Let’s say you are building a processor based system and you select your processor and some peripherals and you want to connect them using a bus. Well the system takes care of all of that for you. Interrupts, memory maps – all taken care of. Their system is based on the wishbone bus, but they intend to add additional busses later. Now couple this software with their Nanoboard 3000 (which I just happen to have one sitting by my desk) and you have a complete prototyping platform for all of this as well. I can’t wait to try it all out. I got the Nanoboard earlier this year, but my computer was old and not capable of running the software. Now I have a great new computer but the old software does not run on Windows 7, so I wait with baited breath for the release so that I can play with all of this and see how it works out in practice.

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Brian Bailey – keeping you covered