HARDI Electronics Releases a New Single-FPGA Module in the HAPS Prototyping Family; Demand for New Product Led by Texas Instruments' Desire for Increased Capacity

LUND, Sweden—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Dec. 2, 2003— HARDI Electronics AB, a pioneer in advanced, high-performance ASIC Prototyping, today announced a stand-alone single-FPGA prototyping board, the HAPS-FPGA_2x3. The HAPS-FPGA_2x3 can be used by itself for an ASIC design up to 1 million ASIC gates running up to 200MHz or as an add-on to HAPS multi-FPGA boards when the need for greater capacity grows.

Customers using one FPGA_2x3 can simply add a second FPGA_2x3 to get twice the capacity. The two (or more) boards can be stacked on top of each other or connected together with the HAPS-CON_FLEX, a system of flexible high speed boards. All HAPS add-on boards such as memories, communication, I/O and connector boards are compatible with HAPS-FPGA_2x3.

Unique to the FPGA_2x3 is the ability to use LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signaling). Each board has 120 LVDS pairs and 2 of its 16 clocks can be used for LVDS, enabling the designer to transfer data at much higher speeds than boards that do not use LVDS. The configurable I/O voltage for the FPGA_2x3 is between 1.8V to 3.3V and there are 1071 available I/Os. The new board uses either one Xilinx VirtexII XC2V6000 or XC2V8000 in the biggest available package (containing more than 1500 pins). Programming is done by standard JTAG interface or when the FPGA_2x3 is connected to a HAPS motherboard, optionally through the CompactFlash card reader on the motherboard. As with all HAPS boards, the data programmed into the FPGA can be encrypted by a battery backed encryption key.

"We have been working with HARDI Electronics for a few months and they were able to meet our challenges by developing the FPGA_2x3. By adding one or two FPGA_2x3 to the HAPS mother board, we will be able to prototype the larger designs by stacking the boards together, saving a tremendous amount of time," stated Kevin Smith, Senior FPGA Designer at Texas Instruments in Dallas, Texas (NYSE:TXN). "We chose HARDI because their architecture was clean, had massive amounts of I/O between the FPGAs and to external connectors, and was easily expandable. We even designed our own daughtercard from mechanical connector specs and I/O specs provided by the company. The Synplicity Certify board files that HARDI provides for partitioning the ASIC code into FPGAs were helpful, as was their support in modifying them for our particular application."

"We are constantly being approached by customers who like the flexibility of our HAPS system but do not need the full capacity our original system offers," stated Lars-Eric Lundgren, president and CEO of HARDI Electronics. "We designed the FPGA_2x3 to be used as a stand alone, low-cost solution for those that need only a single FPGA system or to be part of a larger system that requires additional FPGAs. We developed our HAPS product line to adapt and grow as the design sizes and challenges of our customers grow."

HARDI and Synplicity

HARDI encourages its customers to use Synplicity's Certify(R) software. HARDI has completely redesigned its Certify board files so customers can easily add an FPGA_2x3 to a HAPS motherboard. It takes only a few minutes and customers have a graphical view of HAPS within Certify. Customers can then layout their designs on the board, and try out different partitions using the Certify software. Many ASIC prototyping engineers change their designs to fit their FPGA boards. With HAPS and Certify, designers can adapt the board to their design without changing any HDL code at all.

"HARDI Electronics has been an early supporter of prototyping and was one of the first members of our Partners in Prototyping program," stated Brian Caslis, Director of Marketing for Verification Products at Synplicity. "Prototyping hardware such as HAPS, offers designers significant advantages in cost and time to market. With HAPS and Certify, designers have a proven, tested flow that lets them quickly implement their ASIC designs into high-performance prototyping hardware."

Pricing and Availability

The HAPS-FPGA_2x3 is available today. Pricing starts at $9,900 in the United States and EUR 8,900 in Europe for a single board. For more information about the company's daughter boards, please visit: http://www.hardi.com/haps/literature/haps_db_ds.pdf.

For photos of the new HAPS-FPGA_2x3, please visit: http://www.hardi.se/haps/images/.

For more information on HARDI Electronics, please visit http://www.hardi.com.

For more information on Texas Instruments Incorporated (NYSE:TXN), please visit http://www.ti.com.

For more information on Synplicity Inc. (Nasdaq:SYNP), please visit http://www.synplicity.com.

HARDI Electronics AB
Bo Nilsson, +46-46-16 29 00
bo.nilsson@hardi.com
or
HighPointe Communications
Barbara Marker (US PR), 503-209-2323
barbara@hipcom.com
or
PrismaPR
Bettina Lerchenmuller (European PR), +49-8106-24-72-33
prismapr@compuserve.com