Integration Driving Acquisitions
By Ed Sperling
Integration of point tools into EDA flows has always been a problem, but it is becoming increasingly thorny as designs grow more complex at advanced nodes and begin including both hardware and software.
This accounts for the recent acquisitions that Synopsys has made in the virtual prototyping arena—CoWare, VaST and Virtio—and the investment it has made in its next-generation Virtualizer, which integrates all of those platforms. Synopsys claims the new solution, which it unveiled today, can accelerate software schedules by up to nine months for complex SoCs.
What’s particularly important for acquisitions—and what increasingly is driving them—is the ability to bring these capabilities into existing flows. That tends to be a problem with point tools because they often are out of sync with the rest of the EDA cycle.
“The problem with virtual prototyping has been that the feedback is still at the software level,” said Mark Serughetti, Synopsys’ director of product marketing for virtual prototyping. “Once you get to the hardware, the interconnect is not configured. The real value in analysis tools is bringing together hardware and software information.”
That’s true at a number of steps throughout the flow. Verification of software doesn’t necessarily match what’s in a real software load. And while simulation does work, it’s slow. When it comes to subsystems, as well, there are problems integrating the subsystem with the rest of the system.
“There are a lot of evolutionary designs,” Serughetti said. “One piece may be brand new but part of that design already exists. Software exists for those pieces, too. We’ve seen customers that are interested in bringing together a virtual prototype with an FPGA prototype, but they have been unable to do that.”
Cadence cited similar integration concerns on the hardware side with low-power clock concurrent optimization, which drove its Azuro acquisition last week. Dave Desharnais, group director for product marketing for silicon realization, said the big challenge has always been integration—in this case into Cadence’s Encounter flow.
“As a standalone tool, there has been a big disconnect,” Desharnais said. “As a point tool, this broke the flow. As an integrated part of the flow it can have a big impact. And it would have taken us two to three years to develop internally.”
Azuro’s concurrent optimization technology addresses inefficiencies in clock-tree implementations, providing more detailed information in real time instead of an “ideal” clock representation. Cadence claims a 10% to 15% reduction in overall system power.
Mentor’s focus on embedded software with its CodeSourcery assets acquisition last December represents an attempt to solve a similar challenge, this one in embedded software development.
Tags: Azuro, Cadence, CodeSourcery, CoWare, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, VaST, Virtio, virtual prototyping