The EDA/embedded connection - Comment

Electronic News, June 17, 2002 by Dave Kelf

WHEN PARALLEL worlds collide on Star Trek, it usually means big trouble for Scotty and the rest of his engineering team. Today, we are witness to a less cosmic version of this scenario in modern IC design as the parallel worlds of hardware and software become more intertwined.

The complexity of today's electronic systems is such that their design requires multiple specialists--a surefire way to slow things down at the same time that pressure to speed time-to-market is increasing.

One solution is the long-term development of generic hardware platforms that can be "refreshed" periodically with software, reconfigurable soft IP or FPGAs to provide incremental improvements. This approach reduces engineering costs and allows for rapid reaction to changing market requirements.

Progressives see a path ahead to produce greater convergence between traditionally separate segments, joining the nonoverlapping universes of embedded systems design and EDA. The reconfigurable camp focuses on software to drive its processor platforms as efficiently as possible and is a big user of embedded software development tools. The traditional hardware design flow adherents continually seek new EDA tools to streamline the design process. Linking these disparate specializations enables a new level of software/hardware interaction that might just enable significant SOC advancements.

As long as the current trends of increasing IC densities and the issues with full system verification hold, it is without question that something has to give. New trends such as IP reuse and embedded software and firmware drive system verification problems to a new level of complexity. Bridges must be set up between hardware and software design teams for upstream verification, and these have to be based on alliances between EDA and embedded solution companies.

No standards exist for these bridges today, but it's pretty easy to guess what they should look like. They should resemble current tools and methodologies but be extended to allow usage by the other groups. For example, a hardware description language (HDL) simulator that can he driven transparently from within a software environment would allow software engineers to include semiconstructed hardware platforms within the software code. This provides a basis for concurrency in the design process, with both software and hardware engineers using the same code and models.

Even better, design languages that allow hardware and software to be specified together at a high level and then converted into both hardware and software models will go a long way toward creating a common environment. They will add a bond between software and hardware engineering teams.

To foster this type of close cooperation, Co-Design Automation has been working with notable industry standards organizations to advance state-of-the-art HDLs such as our own Superlog.

This language exemplifies the type of "bridge" HDL that is needed by all parties to incorporate the needs of design, verification and software engineers. Based on Verilog, Superlog ties the worlds of software and hardware design together by leveraging advanced language constructs and by enabling transparent connections between the varied platform domains. It also brings together a wealth of verification and system features to unify the entire SOC design flow.

The techniques to further the advancement of IC design will require new relationships between currently divergent groups and their vendors, but it's an essential task to undertake. In order to, in the words of Mr. Spock, "live long and prosper," EDA and embedded solution companies, along with their customers, must find ways to work together through industry-standard approaches to ensure interoperability and robust tool development.

Dave Kelf is the VP of marketing at Co-Design Automation Inc. in Los Altos, Calif.