What's Good About FSP’s Enhanced Multi-Device Connections? 16.6 Has Several New Enhancements

The FPGA System Planner (FSP) 16.6-2015 release now provides support for multiple connectors as one “target set” object. The allows FSP to consider all connectors as one large connector during synthesis and the target sets can be connected in a daisy chain.

This enhancement was added as a way to address certain tester types of designs where optimal daisy chain connections need to be made from a DUT through several other connectors. Prior to the 16.6-2015 release, each daisy chain had to be defined separately (e.g., DUT>J1>J4>J7, DUT>J2>J5>J7), resulting in connections at the DUT that were optimal for each chain, but not for the entire collection of chains.

The goal with target sets is to model the muxes, LAs, and SMPs as single objects in order to create an optimal daisy chain from the LA_SMPs to the SMPs to the DUT to the LAs to the muxes and finally to the FPGA.

With the target sets defined, they can be selected in the Group Settings form as if they were any other single interface. Target sets will be shown in bold. The Daisy Chain option must be set since the goal is to create point-to-point connections through several objects (the target sets):

After the Group Settings are defined, synthesis proceeds as it would for any design:

Please share your experiences using this new capability.

Jerry “GenPart” Grzenia