BANGALORE, INDIA: Synplicity Inc., a leading supplier of innovative IC design and verification solutions, announced the ReadyIP Initiative, a program that takes aim at simplifying the access, evaluation, and use of intellectual property (IP) for FPGA-based system design.

The ReadyIP program delivers the industry's first and complete universal, encrypted design methodology for FPGA implementation, allowing users to incorporate and easily integrate IP from several third-party vendors within their designs using the Synplify Pro and/or Synplify Premier solutions, Synplicity's industry-standard synthesis environments. 

The ReadyIP initiative comprises a number of key elements.  These include standards-based IP encryption with rights management to facilitate easy evaluation of IP; the System Designer, a new technology-independent IP integration capability that is now part of Synplicity's synthesis products (see related announcement, Synplicity Introduces System Designer: System-level Implementation and IP Integration Tool For FPGA Design); "push-button" Internet access to third-party IP directly from within Synplicity's FPGA design environment; and the use of the SPIRIT Consortium's IP–XACT IP packaging format to enable mix and match of IP from a variety of sources including the use of in-house IP.

Synplicity also announced that its ReadyIP initiative is being endorsed and supported by leading IP vendors.  ARM, CAST, Gaisler Research and Tensilica are partnering with Synplicity as charter members in this new industry initiative.  Selected secure IP from these vendors, that universally target multiple FPGA devices, will be available through this new program.

Synplicity believes its ReadyIP program is a big step toward providing an industry-wide, standards-based design flow for FPGA implementation using IP which benefit users because they can: 1) try IP before having to license it, 2) improve design productivity when using IP, and 3) use the standards to create their own IP-based design reuse practice. 

"Synplicity's ReadyIP Program is the first to facilitate the widespread availability of IP while allowing designers to easily 'try before they buy' third-party IP," said Andy Haines, senior vice president of marketing, Synplicity.  "As important, it allows a company to package its own IP and securely distribute it throughout an organization for design reuse and implementation using Synplicity's ReadyIP design flow." Haines continued, "We are very pleased to welcome ARM, CAST, Gaisler Research, Synopsys and Tensilica into this program not only because they are key IP suppliers, but also as forward thinking companies supporting this major productivity advancement for the design community."

FPGA designers are increasingly turning to third-party IP to implement FPGA-based systems. The ReadyIP solution now gives these designers access to both third-party and internally developed IP within Synplicity's FPGA synthesis products and simplifies IP assembly through Synplicity's System Designer capability, a solution for integrating IP into FPGA designs using the designer's FPGA of choice. IP access is provided through Synplicity's synthesis environment via a Web browser.  With this "push-button" feature, the user can download various IP directly into the synthesis environment for evaluation.