
Altera Corporation
 1
Introduction
December 1996
Overview
Digital logic designers today must create designs consisting of tens-of-
thousands of gates while meeting increased pressure to shorten time-to-
market. At the same time, designers must maintain architecture-
independence without sacrificing silicon efficiency.
Meeting these requirements with today’s EDA software tools is not easy. 
Schematic-based design entry provides superior efficiency but 
implements architecture-dependent, low-level functions. High-level 
hardware description languages (HDLs) offer architecture-independence, 
but offer reduced silicon efficiency and performance. 
Because a standard set of functions supported by all EDA and integrated 
circuit (IC) vendors was not previously available, bridging the gap 
between architecture-independence and efficiency was difficult. 
However, with the introduction of EDA software tools that support the 
library of parameterized modules (LPM), designers can now create 
architecture-independent designs that have high silicon efficiency.
History of LPM
The LPM standard was proposed in 1990 to enable efficient mapping of 
digital designs to diverse architectures such as programmable logic 
devices (PLDs), gate arrays, and standard cells. The LPM was accepted as 
an Electronic Industries Association (EIA) Interim standard in April 1993 
as an adjunct standard to the Electronic Design Interface Format (EDIF), 
an industry-standard syntax that describes a structural netlist. EDIF can 
be used to transfer designs between the different software tools of EDA 
vendors and from EDA tools to IC tools. LPM functions describe the 
logical operation of the netlist. LPM functions used in a design can be 
directly passed to the IC vendor’s design implementation software 
through an EDIF netlist file. Before the arrival of the LPM standard, each 
EDIF netlist would typically contain architecture-specific logic functions, 
which made architecture-independent design impossible. 
LPM functions are compatible with any text or graphic design entry tool, 
and are supported by Altera
 through MAX+PLUS
tool vendors, including Cadence, Exemplar, Mentor Graphics, MINC, 
Summit Design, Synopsys, VeriBest, and Viewlogic. Altera has supported 
the standard since 1993, and many other silicon companies will support 
the LPM standard by the end of 1997. 
 II and major EDA