VaST Extends Model Access Through New Licensing Program

Electronic News, July 26, 1999

Scottsdale, Ariz.-VaST Systems Technology, Santa Clara, Calif., today is introducing its CoMET-VP Model Program, aimed at giving OEMs free access to all the virtual processor models (VPMs) in VaST's model library.

The models are free when a customer purchases VaST's systems-level engineering tool set, CoMET 2.0.

Through this new program, users can access VaST's executable virtual prototypes library, in order to model, verify, and debug complete hardware/software systems in system-on-a-chip, ASIC, and PCB designs, the company said. This allows the user to explore a range of models before selecting one. Once a user chooses a particular processor, the full, bus-functional model of the processor is delivered, including the bus function information.

This program addresses the growing importance of hardware/software co- design at both the architectural design stage of a new project and later, when the final requirements of the critical resources are determined, the company said. Until recently, the choice of processor occurred early in the design process based on the engineer's past experience. In this scenario, hardware/software co-verification, a subset of co-design, took place only on nearly-complete designs where the processor had been selected long before, and co-simulation tools were primarily used for low-level driver and interface development.

This paradigm breaks down when the designer moves up into the co-design and architectural engineering design phases, where the choice of processor is just one of the variables. At the system level, it is imperative that designers quickly engage in analysis of processor alternatives and constraints that might affect later stages of the design. Because most other vendors charge for each model a customer wishes to try, the cost of comparing multiple processor models can be prohibitive, VaST contends, which makes it difficult to choose the best processor for the design.

With this new licensing program, the customer is given access to all of VaST's processor models at the beginning of the design process and then provided with a more detailed model of the selected processor once that choice has been made. As VPMs are added to the CoMET library, they will be included in the CoMET-VP Model Program.

Processors in the CoMET-VP Model Program initially include the following: ARM7 Family with Thumb Extensions, ARM9 Family with Thumb Extensions, 68K Family, MIPS R3000 Family, MIPS R4000 Family, Hitachi SH3 Family, Hitachi SH4 Family, Sparc V8, NEC 42xx Family, and Intel 386.