Altium Designer 14 - New hardware extensions for Altera, Lattice Semiconductor and Xilinx FPGA devices

New hardware extensions for Altera, Lattice Semiconductor and Xilinx FPGA devices. The release brings PCB pin swap, and FPGA design and programming capabilities to Altium Designer 14.

While we’ve been working hard to develop device support for the current generation of FPGA devices, we have also spent time ensuring we have the skills and resources in our content development and R&D teams to be able stay current on these in the longer term.

You’ll also see that device support is now being delivered to you through the Altium Designer Extensions system. This system, introduced with Altium Designer 14, makes building, releasing and, most importantly, installing device support a more streamlined and scalable process.

In this initial release, the following Hardware Extensions are available:

Altera Cyclone V Extension

• Cyclone V E
• Cyclone V GX
• Cyclone V GT
• Cyclone V SE
• Cyclone V SX
• Cyclone V ST

Altera Arria V Extension

• Arria V GT
• Arria V GX
• Arria V ST
• Arria V SX

Altera Arria V GZ Extension

• Arria V GZ

Altera Stratix V Extension

• Stratix V GT
• Stratix V GX
• Stratix V GS
• Stratix V E

Lattice MachXO2 Extension

• All devices

Xilinx Artix-7 Extension

• All devices

Xilinx Kintex-7 Extension

• All devices

Xilinx Virtex-7 Extension

• All devices

Installation

Customers with valid Altium Designer subscription can install new extensions from “Purchased” tab on “Extensions and Updates” page. For installation instructions please visit the Techdocs page, here.

Presently for Hardware Extensions, board level libraries will need to be installed separately to gain full support for them in the board level tools (eg pin swapping). Board level libraries remain available to subscription customers in AltiumLive here under Unified Components.

We’re now going live with an Extension gallery for Altium Designer on our website here. These pages provide more detailed information about each extension, including any additional setup requirements.

What’s next?

Following this release, we will be enabling Xilinx Zynq and Lattice ECP3 families for customers on our beta program. Microsemi Smartfusion2 and IGLOO2 are currently in early stages of development.

Support for Lattice MachXO3, Altera Stratix 10, Altera Arria 10 devices are planned, but remain pending the availability of information, toolchain support and development boards from vendors.

So please stay tuned for more news about Hardware Extensions in the near future !