Altera Corporation 8–1
September 2008
8. Description, Architecture,
and Features
Introduction
HardCopy
®
APEX
TM
devices extend the flexibility of high-density FPGAs
to a cost-effective, high-volume production solution. The migration
process from an Altera
®
FPGA to a HardCopy APEX device offers
seamless migration of a high-density system-on-a-programmable-chip
(SOPC) design to a low-cost alternative device with minimal risk. Using
HardCopy APEX devices, Altera’s SOPC solutions can be leveraged from
prototype to production, while reducing costs and speeding
time-to-market.
A significant benefit of HardCopy devices is that customers do not need
to be involved in the device migration process. Unlike
application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) development, the
HardCopy design flow does not require generation of test benches, test
vectors, or timing and functional simulation. The HardCopy migration
process only requires the Quartus
®
II software-generated output files
from a fully functional APEX
20KE or APEX 20KC device. Altera
performs the migration and delivers functional prototypes in as few as
seven weeks.
A risk-free alternative to ASICs, HardCopy APEX devices are
customizable, full-featured devices created by Altera’s proprietary
design migration methodology. They are based on Altera’s
industry-leading high-density device architecture and use an
area-efficient sea-of-logic-elements (SOLE) core.
HardCopy APEX devices retain all the same features as the APEX 20KE
and APEX 20KC devices, which combine the strength of LUT-based and
product-term-based devices in conjunction with the same embedded
memory structures. All routing resources that were programmable in the
APEX 20K device family are replaced by custom interconnect, resulting in
a considerable die size reduction and subsequent cost saving.
The SRAM configuration cells of the original FPGA are replaced in
HardCopy APEX devices by metal elements, which define the function of
each logic element (LE), embedded memory, and I/O cell in the device.
These resources are connected to each other using the same metallization
layers. Once a HardCopy APEX device has been manufactured, the
functionality of the device is fixed and no programming is possible.
Altera performs the migration of the original FPGA design to an
equivalent HardCopy APEX device using a proprietary design migration
flow.
H51007-2.3
