National Semiconductor Launches New WEBENCH FPGA Power Architect

By DE Editors

National Semiconductor Corp. has introduced WEBENCH FPGA Power Architect, a design tool to model and optimize power supplies for FPGAs. 

WEBENCH FPGA Power Architect incorporates the supply requirements of more than 130 of the newest FPGA devices from Altera Corp. and Xilinx, Inc. Modern power supply systems, including advanced FPGAs, are complex to design, often incorporating multiple unique loads to drive precisely specified voltages. In addition to the required voltages and currents, each load may have specific limitations for ripple, noise filtering, synchronization and separation of supplies, as well as start up definitions (soft start). The power supply designs delivered by WEBENCH incorporate power requirements published by the FPGA manufacturers. 

“Xilinx has made a considerable investment in simplifying the power supply requirements and the power distribution system requirements for our FPGAs,” says Jameel Hussein, technical marketing manager for Power and Configuration Solutions at Xilinx. “With the help of National Semiconductor’s WEBENCH FPGA Power Architect, design workload is further reduced to allow the customer to get to market faster and save cost on board-spins and debugging.”

To begin a design, the designer selects an FPGA from Altera or Xilinx and the tool automatically populates the power requirements, identifying core and I/O options for every potential load of that array. Once tuned by the designer, WEBENCH collects all the loads and creates multiple power supply architectures as options for driving the FPGA and the total system. 

For more information, visit the WEBENCH FPGA Power Architect page and watch a video demonstration.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company's website.