Vital spec closer to IEEE standard

Electronic News, Oct 23, 1995 by Judy Erkanat

Mountain View, Calif.--The VHDL Initiative Toward ASIC Libraries (Vital) standard ASIC modeling specification 3.0 moved another step closer to becoming an IEEE standard, VHDL International (VI) reported. The specification was submitted in June to the IEEE for balloting by the 1076.4 Technical Working Group (TWG), with results made public in early October.

"The balloting was overwhelmingly in favor of Vital release 3.0," said Victor Berman, chairman of both IEEE's TWG and the VI Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), and director of language-based design at Cadence Design Systems. "Of the 104 ballots received, only four were negatives and four abstentions."

Final approval is expected to be made during the IEEE review committee meeting in December. The standard document will be known as 1076.4-95. This is based on its project authorization request (PAR) number 1076.4 and the year of standardization.

The IEEE 1076.4 Vital release 3.0, a reference guide for developing Vital libraries and the equivalent of the VHDL language reference manual, will become the official definition for developing IEEE standard ASIC libraries and for developing Vital-compliant electronic design automation (EDA) tools.

Supporters of the initiative include Compass Design Automation, which announced as part of its Mercury Library Development Tools a Vital '95 IEEE 1076.4-95 model generator. The Mercury LDTs automatically generate and verify sign-off-quality models for Vital simulators that comply with the Vital '95 specification.

"Clearly, library development--and the development of models associated with libraries--is playing an increasingly important role for ASIC vendors, systems companies, and fabless semiconductor houses alike," said Michael Saniei, product marketing manager for library development tools at Compass. "As an early supporter of the Vital effort, Compass can offer a Vital '95 model generator that will allow customers to quickly adopt the new Vital '95 specifications knowing they have accurate models that execute efficiently in Vital '95-compliant simulators."

Mr. Saniei explained that although in the past standards existed, the many different flavors of those standards caused companies to spend development time on finding common ground between them. "At 3.0, it will be a standardized standard, enabling us to address a variety of people and improve the support we can supply them," he said. "In spite of the delay from the anticipated approval of Vital in early September, and the subsequent delay to late September, we are confident it will be approved."

The IEEE 1076.4 TWG was responsible for development and documentation of the specification. The work, funded by VI, was also supported by an industry team of technical experts who form the Technical Action Group (TAG) led by Oz Levia of Synopsys. This group, which includes representatives from Cadence, Mentor Graphics, Synopsys, Texas Instruments, Toshiba and Viewlogic, was responsible for resolving technical issues and recommending solutions to TWG.

More than 20 companies currently provide or are developing Vital libraries, which Cadence conceived at the Design Automation Conference in 1992 to accelerate the development of standard VHDL-based, sign-off quality ASIC libraries. The Vital initiative grew its support to more than 55 companies in the U.S., Europe and Japan, with the full support of VHDL International.

Compass' Mercury products include a new model generation capability that produces models based on the Vital '95 spec and a second element in the form of a flexible delay model precomputer that calculates timing delays and timing checks in the standard delay file format. Full release is planned for March, 1996, with beta shipments as early as Nov. 15, 1995. Pricing starts at $60,000 per license for new customers, and starts at $30,000 for existing Mercury LDT customers.