Xilinx announced it has acquired Falcon Computing Solutions, a privately-held leading provider of high-level synthesis (HLS) compiler optimization technology for hardware acceleration of software applications. The acquisition will make adaptive computing more accessible to software developers by enhancing the Xilinx Vitis™ Unified Software Platform with automated hardware-aware optimizations.

The integration of Falcon Computing’s innovative compiler technology into the Vitis platform will allow software developers to accelerate C++ applications with minimal hardware expertise. Falcon Computing’s source code transformation reduces the need for application developers to adapt their code, or add architecture-specific programming directives, in order to achieve significant hardware acceleration.

Falcon Computing was co-founded in 2014 by Dr. Jason Cong, the Volgenau Chair for Engineering Excellence at the Computer Science Department of UCLA, the Director of the Center for Domain Specific Computing, a Fellow of ACM and IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. With roots in academia and research, Falcon Computing has been at the forefront of the new wave of FPGA adoption. Dr. Cong also co-founded AutoESL (now Vitis HLS) which Xilinx acquired in 2010 and Neptune Design Automation (now part of Vivado) which Xilinx acquired in 2013. Falcon Computing is headquartered in Los Angeles, Calif. The company serves enterprise customers and academic institutions across the United States and China.