A case study on rapid prototyping of hardware systems: the effect of CAD tool capabilities, design flows, and design styles

CAD tools are necessary for even the most rudimentary hardware designs when the target technology is FPGA or VLSI. This paper presents an experiment in the use of vendor-supplied vs. third-party tools, of high-level design (behavioral) vs. cell-based design, of technology tradeoffs among different vendors, and of design styles among designers. The experiment is a n-version hardware design project, in which many designs were made from common specifications, using different CAD tools and design styles. Some interesting conclusions can be drawn regarding the process, and these conclusions show new trends in terms of tool capabilities and desirable design flows.