Out in Front: September 2, 1996

There may be no free lunch, but until the end of January you can get a free copy of Aldec's graphical state-machine-editor and HDL-editor tools on the company's Web page. The complementary tools, part of Aldec's Active-CAD Development Series, support Abel, Verilog, and VHDL. The tools do not include logic synthesis but do include interfaces to a number of PC-based synthesis tools, including Aldec's own Active-synthesis and synthesis products from Exemplar Logic (Alameda, CA) and Minc (Colorado Springs, CO).

Along with the editors, you get a language assistant and HDL-design wizards—aids to help designers who are familiar with schematic-based design learn about designing with HDL-based tools. The self-extracting setup program for the editors uses 3 Mbytes and contains installation files for both Windows 95 and NT.

—by Jim Lipman

Aldec, Henderson, NV. (702) 456-1222, fax (702) 456-1310, http://www.aldec.com.