New White Paper, Video and Improvements for StellarIP
We recently announced some of the numerous updates and improvements that have been made to StellarIP this year to expand its feature set and make it more user-friendly for firmware designers. Today, we direct you to a new white paper that expands on the benefits of our FPGA firmware design tool.
4DSP is constantly working to improve StellarIP to help customers easily implement their designs and quickly get the most out of their hardware. Since its introduction in 2011, a growing number of clients have leveraged the library of proven firmware at the core of StellarIP to more efficiently achieve their design goals. This intuitive tool has also been essential for boosting productivity here at 4DSP, where our engineers have used it to create hundreds of FPGA reference designs for different platforms. These designs have, of course, been passed along to our customers.
Most notable among the improvements made in 2014 are the significant enhancements to the graphical interface, which simplifies editing. Design integrity protection has also been improved to help minimize mistakes and save time. Another key addition is support for Microsoft Windows 8.1, and StellarIP now also has the ability to automatically download updates, which allows 4DSP to deliver the latest features, improvements, and bug fixes directly to users as they become available.
Furthermore, as FPGA industry leader Xilinx prepares to switch to Vivado Design Suite for all of its future FPGA products, 4DSP has added Vivado support to StellarIP. This is important for users because it allows them to regenerate old ISE designs for Vivado for compatible FPGA cards. More improvements are in the works for StellarIP, including plans to streamline the process of firmware updates, add support for VHDL generics, and implement an automated assistant to guide users in the creation of stars (the StellarIP term for IP blocks). Be sure to install the latest version of the tool to ensure that you have timely access to upcoming features.
Selected Updates and Improvements in 2014:
• Improved graphical interface
• Improved library and design integrity protection
• Library merging
• Local library support
• Search in library view to speed up library editing
• More pre-generate checks and better error and warning messages
• Improved log output window (including Xilinx shell outputs redirected to StellarIP)
• File type registration and double-click support from Windows Explorer
• Text file editor
• More custom configuration settings
• Automatic version updates
• Help files
• Xilinx ISE and Vivado support
• Windows 8.1 support
More information, including a new tutorial video, can be found at:
http://www.4dsp.com/software_stellar.php
StellarIP can be used with 4DSP hardware or any third-party FPGA platform under licensing. It is included as part of the Board Support Package (BSP) which is provided for free with the purchase of 4DSP’s FPGA and FMC products.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have additional questions.