Do I have to install a third-party synthesis tool to use HDL Coder?

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Do I have to install a third-party HDL synthesis tool (e.g. AMD/Xilinx Vivado, Xilinx ISE, Intel/Altera Quartus, Microchip/Microsemi Libero SoC) to use HDL Coder and its support packages?

Accepted Answer

MathWorks Support Team
MathWorks Support Team on 1 Apr 2025
Edited: MathWorks Support Team on 1 Apr 2025
This will depend on the workflow that you select in HDL Workflow Advisor step 1.1.:

For 'IP Core Generation', 'FPGA-in-the-loop', 'FPGA Turnkey', and 'Simulink Real-Time FPGA I/O' workflow:

When using the above workflows in HDL Workflow Advisor, HDL Coder expects that you have a third-party synthesis tool (appropriate for your FPGA) available.
This is because these workflows are tailored to work on specific FPGA devices and supported evaluation boards for which we provide HDL Coder support packages.
The synthesis tool can be installed locally on the computer running MATLAB/Simulink, or on a network/server location that is accessible from your computer. You will be prompted to set up your synthesis tool for use with MATLAB when installing an HDL Coder support package.

For 'Generic ASIC/FPGA' workflow:

For the "Generic ASIC/FPGA" target workflow, the presence of a synthesis tool is not required. An exception to this is if you configured MATLAB/Simulink to include vendor-specific code, such as a Vendor Specific Floating Point Library (before R2023a "Floating Point IP Library" - see release note).
In general, HDL Coder has the ability to generate portable, platform-independent HDL code from your MATLAB function or Simulink model. If you do not want to invoke a synthesis tool from MATLAB/Simulink, and would rather like to integrate the generated VHDL/Verilog code into your FPGA project manually, see the following answer on generating HDL code only:

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