IP99: Simutech, ISS evaluate a core via the Web

IP99: Simutech, ISS evaluate a core via the Web
EDINBURGH, Scotland — The first functional verification of an intellectual property (IP) core over the Internet was demonstrated this week at IP99 by Simutech LLC (Vancouver, Wash.) and Integrated Silicon Systems (Belfast, Northern Ireland), using Simutech's Rave prototyping system.

Simutech and Integrated Silicon Systems (ISS) demonstrated the remote evaluation of a Viterbi decoder block implemented in silicon and intended for use in third-generation mobile communications system-level chips.

Rave is a hardware-assisted Java-based verification tool that Simutech claims runs 10,000 times faster than software simulation and 10 times faster than other emulation systems. It consists of a cabinet loaded with up to 31 CoreBoards, each of which contains one or more IP blocks implemented as a high-density FPGA or as a bonded-out core. CoreBoards are linked through a 128-bit time-domain multiplexing backplane bus and the user controls the verification through a PC or Unix workstation. Optionally, users can run Rave in concert with an HDL simulator.

First announced at the Design Automation Conference in June this year, Rave is currently being shipped to beta sites and should become commercially available in the first quarter of 2000, according to Dave Stewart, vice president of European operations for Simutech.

User software and hardware test benches can drive evaluation models within the system, or they can be driven from a real-world environment. An engineer performing the evaluation can view the results using a number of HDL or software development environments.

Simutech expects that the ability to run Rave over the Internet will make it useful prior to the licensing of third-party virtual components, thus allowing interested parties to evaluate a potential partner's cores.

Simutech customers and partners are responsible for porting IP models to Simutech CoreBoards, which require either an FPGA configuration file for the IP to be modeled or a bonded-out chip containing the core that Simutech can solder onto a CoreBoard. Each CoreBoard contains a 'wrapper' FPGA that manages the interconnection and timing to the Rave backplane, plus an IP section, which accommodates one or more devices housing IP cores.

"Because a CoreBoard can be shipped to a potential customer's Rave site or accessed over the Internet, as in the current demo, it provides a great deal of security to the IP core provider who does not have to provide HDL code prior to signing a licensing agreement," said Stewart.

"In the last few years we have witnessed an increase in demand from our customers to evaluate our IP functioning in real silicon within a system-level environment. Simutech's CoreBoard and [the] Rave Prototyper system looks like a great way to open up Internet-accessed IP-evaluation in silicon," said James Doherty, chief executive officer of ISS. "The feedback we get from this Viterbi demonstrator should prove to be extremely valuable."

In the case of the initial demonstration, the ISS Viterbi decoder was programmed into a single FPGA on a Simutech CoreBoard plugged into a socket in the Rave Prototyper system. Stimulus software is runs on the Rave but the test is initiated and the results are viewed remotely.

"We see great promise in an Internet-accessed evaluation methodology," said Doherty. "The user feedback we get from this trial will help us understand how to exploit Internet access to our best-in-class IP for multimedia and communications SoC."

Andy Travers, chief executive officer of the Virtual Component Exchange (VCX), said, "There still remains a strong need to provide technical confidence in an IP block early in a project's decision cycle, and the only way to do this is to run real application data on that IP, in real silicon, in a real system context."

Both ISS and Simutech are members of the VCX, a not-for-profit organization attempting to streamline business and legal aspects of licensing IP cores.

"It is exciting to see companies like Simutech and ISS partnering to pioneer a viable process, through the use of the Internet, that gives users a level of technical confidence in the evaluation and verification of SIP [silicon intellectual property] blocks," Travers said.

While it was not necessarily appropriate for VCX to specify the Simutech Rave system as a mandated part of the VCX trading system, Travers said it had an obvious complementary role and could be one of a number of VCX-approved approaches to IP verification and evaluation prior to licensing.