Patent 7493584 was granted and assigned to Altera on February, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Methods and apparatus are provided for efficiently implementing a programmable chip using hardware description source files passed through multiple tools. A hardware description language source file is provided with mechanisms to allow tool-specific code to be handled by both a synthesis tool and by a simulation tool. Instructions are provided to direct a synthesis tool to read as code comments that a simulation tool is configured to disregard.