A USB Case Study: Accelerating Software Driver Development using Virtual Platforms

Software development is becoming the dominant cost factor in electronics design. The ability to parallelize the traditional sequential process of software development trailing hardware development is crucial to get products to market as early as possible. Virtual platforms are introduced as an effective development instrument for software driver, middleware and OS development. Using an example of the Synopsys DesignWare Cores Hi-Speed USB On-The-Go (HS OTG) controller, this paper demonstrates how the specific challenges in software driver development of complex IP blocks—early availability, visibility and control—can be addressed with virtual platforms.

This white paper provides a quantitative summary of the gains realized in Synopsys' USB OTG driver development project through the use of virtual platforms, as well as an outlook of how to apply the lessons learned from the USB OTG driver development to other connectivity IP such as SATA, Ethernet, DDR2 and DDR3.