Companies cooperate on C/C++ services

Companies cooperate on C/C++ services
SAN JOSE, Calif. — C Level Design Inc. has teamed up with Easics NV (Leuven, Belgium) to offer design services for work done in C/C++ under a program called C-Expressway. Executives from the companies said further cooperation between the two, possibly on product development, was possible.

"The combination of Easics' high-level system design and C Level's C-to-HDL tools allows customers to go all the way from C down to gates," said Dan Skilken, president and chief executive officer of C Level (San Jose, Calif.).

The transatlantic nature of the C-Expressway partnership will provide the team with engineering resources in both Europe and the United States, Skilken said.

Both companies have tools that operate from C/C++ language system-level description. Easics, a spin-off from the Interuniversities Microelectronics Center in Leuven, is introducing a C/C++ system-level modeling design flow while C Level Design has tools that automatically generate VHDL and Verilog code from ANSI C descriptions. The products support the entire ANSI C language and do not require the use of class libraries, though they do require the use of style guidelines.

"Easics will offer turnkey design services that could be long-term contracts," Skilken said. "C-Level will offer a subset of those services. We will send engineering in to get customers from C to HDL as quickly as possible."

"HDLs are rapidly becoming the bottleneck when doing multi-million gate SoC [system-on-chip] designs," said Dirk Callaerts, marketing manager at Easics. "Real system design modeling at high levels of abstraction can only be done with a language like C/C++."

Skilken said the offer of design services does not in any way concede that the team's tools are difficult to use. "It's what the customer wants," he said. "They ask us to do it. Services provides the design itself, training of their engineers, and us with an understanding of customers needs." Skilken added that service engineers would normally leave behind copies of the tools, which in turn seeds more tools purchases, and that this is a natural way to proceed with a leading-edge technology.

"C-Expressway is the best way for companies to take advantage of the benefits of C/C++ by helping to establish a solid, proven design methodology in C/C++ using the best tools available in the market today," Callaerts said.