The File - March 16 , 2009 - (Page 2) Trends Emulation bridges HW/SW verification By Lauro Rizzatti General Manager EVE-USA, Inc. Emulation has been a valuable tool for chip designers for more than twenty years, from the early days of standard emulators to custom emulators to those based on standard FPGAs. Emulation is now viewed as an essential tool for the design of electronic devices because design sizes and complexity are overpowering software simulation, what many considered to be the cornerstone of a verification and validation strategy. In fact, emulation is becoming a well-used component of hardware/software co-design flow as hardware designers and software developers share the same system and design representations and work together to debug hardware/software interactions. Verification is the most expensive part of hardware design for SoCs and certainly the most frustrating and time consuming. Studies show—and design teams around the world concur—that verification consumes at least 70 per cent of the SoC development cycle. Of the various tools available to a design team from the verification arsenal, only emulation can accomplish the verification task within a practical time frame. Emulation allows more testing earlier in the design cycle to help eliminate this struggle, while managing the process more efficiently to meet verification and validation goals. Moreover, today’s emulators carry a small footprint, are fast, efficient and easy to use. Set up is straightforward and newer emulators consist of just a small number of large FPGAs. The latest generation of emulation systems can execute billions of verification cycles as required in embedded designs in a short period of time. They provide a full view of the design, necessary to debug the hardware. These machines support transactionlevel verification necessary for hardware debugging at a highlevel of abstraction via monitors, checkers and assertions. Pricing, formerly prohibitive, has become more desirable and cost effective as well. Crossing boundaries As design teams in India and elsewhere focus on consumer electronics, wireless, graphics and network router applications, for example, they are working at smaller process technologies, specifying multi-core architectures and adding more embedded software content into chips. They struggle with how to find a software bug that showed up in hardware or how to find the hardware bug that showed up in software. At times it seems that the Rizzatti: Design teams in India are adopting new emulation systems as an essential element of verification and validation in hardware/ software co-design. only thing that holds hardware designers and software developers together are the four pins of the JTAG protocol. Emulation changes all of that. It allows these multi-disciplined design teams to plan more strategically and implement a debugging continued on page Find Datasheets Online Looking for parts to specify for your design project? Browse through thousands of datasheets organised by category, by manufacturer, and alphabetically. Search using keywords or part number to quickly access datasheets. Part No. AD6537B Description GSM/GPRS analogue base band processor with power management and audio output 12-bit mixed-signal front-end processor for broadband applications Micropower sampling 8-bit serial I/O ADCs 16-bit 2-/4-channel delta sigma ADC with PGA, easy drive and I2C Interface Dual 18-bit serializer with pre-emphasis, IEEE 1149.1 (JTAG) and at-speed BIST 7-port multidrop IEEE 1149.1 (JTAG) multiplexer General purpose transistor NPN General purpose transistor NPN Low-power SoC with MCU, memory, 2.4GHz RF transceiver, and USB (Rev. E) High-power dual-band (2.4GHz to 2.5GHz and 4.9GHz to 5.9GHz) RF front end (Rev. C) Manufacturer Analog Devices AD9863 Analog Devices LTC1098 LTC2487 Linear Technology Linear Technology SCAN921821 National Semiconductor SCANSTA112 2N4124G BC847BW National Semiconductor ON Semiconductor ON Semiconductor Texas Instruments Download now… CC2510F32 TRF2436 Texas Instruments 2 EE Times-India | March 16-31, 2009 | www.eetindia.com http://www.embeddeddesignindia.co.in/SEARCH/SUMMARY/technical-articles/SoC.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/SEARCH/SUMMARY/technical-articles/emulation.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/SEARCH/SUMMARY/technical-articles/debugging.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/SEARCH/SUMMARY/technical-articles/FPGA.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/SEARCH/SUMMARY/technical-articles/software+simulation.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/SEARCH/SUMMARY/technical-articles/software+simulation.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/SEARCH/SUMMARY/technical-articles/JTAG.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/AD6537B-1000039415.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/AD9863-1000040026.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/LTC1098-1000042397.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/LTC2487-1000042973.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/SCAN921821-1000026648.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/SCANSTA112-1000026654.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/2N4124G-1000027418.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/BC847BW-1000026675.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/INDEX.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/CC2510F32-1000044201.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/DATASHEET/DETAIL/TRF2436-1000049787.HTM?TheFile_090316 http://www.eetindia.co.in/STATIC/REDIRECT/Newsletter_090316_EETI02.htm
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