Source: Tech Design Forum Historically, the first method to be deployed and to this day most popular method for using a hardware emulator is the in-circuit-emulation (ICE) mode. In this mode, the emulator is plugged into a socket on the physical target system in place of a yet-to-be-built chip to support exercising and debugging the design-under-test … Read more
Emulation performance — or its speed of execution — depends on the architecture of the emulation system and the type of deployment. Source: EETimes Continuing my discourse on various aspects of hardware emulators (see also DAC Trip Report: Expanding EDA’s Charter & Topical Hardware Emulation), I now wish to discuss one of the most important aspects of … Read more
An Ethernet VirtuaLAB provides a software-controlled environment for generating, transmitting, and analyzing Ethernet packets to test Ethernet SoCs mapped inside an emulation platform. Source: Electronic Design With the spectacular surge in demand for connectivity, the Internet has become a major communications highway for billions of users. According to “Internet Live Stats,” the Internet reached out to … Read more
Source: ChipDesign In the not too distant past –– say 20- to 30 years ago –– hardware emulators were huge and hulking, with a massive amount of cables and wires trailing all over the floor. I still remember my first visit to AMD in Austin, Texas, back in 1995, when I saw Quickturn’s Enterprise Emulation … Read more
Dr. Lauro Rizzatti paid close attention to trends at DAC two weeks ago and wrote them up in a trip report for EETimes readers. Source: EETimes As per tradition, Gary Smith kicked off the 52nd DAC June 7 in San Francisco, presenting his EDA industry forecast. Gary remarked that EDA is healthy at over $6 … Read more
Source: Verification Horizons Power continues to be a primary concern for handheld and smart devices, with their high resolution screens that require long battery life, as well as for wall-plugged equipment in datacenters and network configurations, for which the cost of operation is a key market factor. While FinFET process technology reduces static leakage, dynamic power … Read more
What’s needed for power analysis in million-gate SoCs. Source: Semiconductor Engineering Power analysis has quickly become equally as important as functional verification for today’s power-hungry SoCs. Yet, until now, it was not possible to fully analyze dynamic power in very large SoCs running embedded software. That day has finally arrived with new emulation platform software … Read more
Source: Verification Horizons There are intrinsic limitations in the current approach for estimating dynamic power consumption. Briefly, the approach consists of a file-based flow that evolves through two steps. First, a simulator or emulator tracks the switching activity either cumulatively for the entire run in a switching activity interchange format (SAIF) file, or on a cycle-by-cycle … Read more
Source: Verification Horizons THE SECOND DECADE In the second decade, the hardware emulation landscape changed considerably with a few mergers and acquisitions and new players entering the market. The hardware emulators improved notably via new architectures based on custom ASICs. The supporting software improved remarkably and new modes of deployment were devised. The customer base … Read more
By switching to an emulation-based methodology, a company developing application processor units (APUs) can bring up the design on the emulator in days, and typical design changes can be accommodated in less than a day. Source: Electronic Design This year’s International Computer Electronics Show (CES) continued to amaze me with a never-ending display of mindboggling electronic … Read more