The following is an excerpt from a recently published white paper. Click the link at the bottom of the excerpt to read the entire paper.

HapsTrak – A Key To Success

By Bo Nilsson, Synplicity Hardware Products Group

Today, virtually every ASIC and ASSP is being verified using a FPGA-based prototype. That clearly takes prototyping out of its previous ad-hoc existence and puts it right next to software simulation as an essential verification tool for chip design. However, becoming a mainstream verification methodology brings with it the responsibility to adhere to standards, making the tool easily deployable and allowing integration into existing flows and environments. Moreover, in the case of prototyping, it also requires that the prototyping system is applicable and reusable for many years and for a wide variety of projects and designs.

HAPS™ (High-performance ASIC Prototyping System™) is a modular system with multi-FPGA motherboards and standard or custom-made daughter boards, which can be connected together in a variety of ways. Amongst the functions available on standard daughter boards are video processing, various memory types, A/D and D/A conversion, and interfaces to Ethernet, USB, PCI, PCI Express, and ARM. The robust and reliable hardware, together with the flexibility and I/O connectivity, and the large collection of off-the-shelf hardware modules makes it easy for ASIC designers to build their own customized ASIC prototype.

The HAPS concept “build your own ASIC prototype using off-the-shelf hardware modules” implies a few important key requirements. First, there must be a whole set of hardware modules implementing all kinds of functions and interfaces. Second, as new standards and demands arise, new modules must be developed. Some specific demands may even require that customers develop their own modules. Third, all these hardware modules must fit together – mechanically, electrically and functionally. The ruleset defining this is called HapsTrak™.

The main components in HapsTrak are the connectors – a terminal connector and a mating socket connector. All boards in the HAPS family are equipped with at least one socket connector, placed on the bottom side of the boards. All motherboards (boards with FPGAs for customer use), and many daughter boards, also have terminal connectors on the top side. The connectors are placed in a regular matrix, 70x50 mm, and the maximal dimension of boards is defined to be 1 mm less than a multiple of 70 mm, and 50 mm respectively. The maximal height is strictly specified as well.

These modular rules make the HAPS family look like a set of LEGO® bricks – easy to understand, easy to build, and yet with an enormous amount of freedom to put together virtually any system.

Click here to download the entire paper (registration required.