One of the biggest makers of programmable chips in the world, Xilinx, has announced a new deal to acquire Silexica, a company that specializes in C/C++ programming and provides an analysis tool. Xilinx is in the middle of acquisition itself, as it is being bought by AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) for $35 billion in October.
Xilinx develops dynamic processor technology and is responsible for the creation of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), programmable system-on-chip designs (SOCs), and ACAP (a scalable compute acceleration form.)
Moving away from software to app-optimized hardware
Xilinx wants to merge Silexica with its SLX FPGA tool suite, before combining it with the Xilinx Vitis unified software platform, which will make it easier to use for software developers working on complex apps.
Salil Raje, the executive vice president, and general manager at Xilinx said that software programmability is a key aspect in the long-term plans the company has to speed up its efforts to move from software to application-optimized hardware systems.
Silexica’s technology complements the Vitis solution and roadmap, according to Raje, who added that it will accelerate the company’s ability to attract a wider range of developers who want heterogeneous computing architectures.
What the tool does
In a statement, the company explained that Silexica’s SLX FPGA tool suite seeks to tackle non-synthesizable and non-hardware C/C++ code, insert pragmas, detect application parallelism, and determine the best software and hardware partitioning.
The benefits of this include the ability to design at higher levels of abstraction and for faster simulation, coupled with better results, as a consequence of optimizations and ‘design space exploration.’
Maximilian Odendahl, the former Silexica CEO, added that the tool was designed to close the gap between the software and hardware developer domains.
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