Case Study: Phonak achieves rapid FPGA prototyping for ultra‑low‑power hearing‑aid designs with Synopsys Professional Services

Synopsys Professional Services Helps Phonak Establish Rapid Prototyping Flow for Ultra Low Power Designs

Phonak, a Sonova Group company near Zurich with decades of experience in hearing systems, needed to accelerate early software development for a next‑generation ultra low‑power hearing aid platform. The latch‑based HDL design used multiple gated clocks and was not directly suitable for traditional FPGA implementation; modifying the HDL would be time‑consuming, and Phonak’s engineers were new to Synopsys tools, so they required a fast, reusable prototyping flow plus knowledge transfer.

Synopsys Professional Services delivered a Confirma‑based solution using Synplify Pro and the CHIPit Iridium system, porting the emulation flow to FPGA hardware with tool‑based gated clock conversion and real‑time operation. The collaboration enabled early software development on real hardware, avoided risky firmware changes and potential silicon re‑spins, met schedule objectives, and transferred a reusable flow to Phonak’s team.

Phonak

Vesselin Parushev

Project Leader, Microsystems