US 7,590,951 B1
Plug-in component-based dependency management for partitions within an incremental implementation flow
William R. Bell, II, Longmont, Colo. (US); William W. Stiehl, Lafayette, Colo. (US); Emil S. Ochotta, Mountain View, Calif. (US); and W. Story Leavesley, III, Longmont, Colo. (US)
Assigned to XILINX, Inc., San Jose, Calif. (US)
Filed on Aug. 08, 2006, as Appl. No. 11/500,525.
Int. Cl. G06F 17/50 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 716—1  [716/16; 716/17] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of managing an incremental implementation flow (incremental flow) for a circuit design comprising:
storing, on a computer, dependency management data for the incremental flow for the circuit design, wherein the dependency management data specifies which partitions of the circuit design have changed from a prior implementation of the partitions;
from within a first application that performs a selected phase of the incremental flow, invoking at least one plug-in software component configured to access the dependency management data for the circuit design, wherein the at least one plug-in software component provides a common interface to the dependency management data for each application that invokes the at least one plug-in software component to perform the selected phase of the incremental flow;
the at least one plug-in software component identifying partitions of the circuit design that must be run during the selected phase of the incremental flow according to the dependency management data; and
the at least one plug-in software component indicating, to the first application, which partitions to run during the selected phase of the incremental flow.