Overview

Electronic design automation (EDA) tools are an extremely important factor in the design of CPLDs and FPGAs. Initially, PAL vendors and manufacturers of desktop devices for programming PALs provided some very simple HDLs for creating simple designs. Special simulation tools were created to simulate these simple programmable devices. EDA tool vendors added simple features that allowed engineers to use the tools to develop these simple devices.

When more complex devices, CPLDs and FPGAs, arrived on the scene, schematic capture tools were adapted to create designs for these devices. When the tools did not provide the design engineer with enough features to take advantage of device architectures that were growing in complexity, CPLD and FPGA vendors created their own tools.

Eventually, two realizations among programmable device vendors and EDA software tool vendors changed the landscape for these software tools. First, device vendors realized that better, cheaper tools sold their products. When an engineer was deciding on a device to use in his design, the software tools for enabling that design were often just as important as the architecture, size, and technology of the device itself. The device vendors that discovered this fact too late were relegated to the role of niche players; many of them are now out of business or still trying to catch up to the big players.

The other realization, by the software tool vendors, was that these new devices needed their own set of tools in order to take full advantage of their technologies and architectures.