Quickturn unveils emulation system

Electronic News, Jan 27, 1997 by Judy Erkanat

Mountain View, Calif.--Hanging its hat on the submicron issue, Quickturn Design Systems, Inc. continued a series of moves set to bring the company out of its backend slot by unveiling a new emulation system family, CoBalt, and an integration-enabling software tool, Q/Bridge.

"As complexity increases, we reach the point of emulation inevitability," said Naeem Zafar, VP of marketing for Quickturn. "When it comes to deep submicron, emulation may be the only choice. The goal is to bring backend emulation, and Quickturn, forward in the design cycle."

Quickturn's CoBalt (concurrent broadcast array logic technology) emulation system is a custom processor-based, compiled-code logic emulation family offering verification performance and capacity for complex ICs and electronic systems. It uses a version of a custom chip designed in IBM's 0.25-micron semiconductor process that has been working for 14 years at IBM.

CoBalt's versatility includes four modes: vector debug, co-simulation, in-circuit emulation and the economical ability to operate as a server.

At 1 million gates per hour, CoBalt delivers the fastest compilation speed in the industry, said Quickturn, which also claimed the new product delivers the industry's highest logic and memory capacity, accommodating up to 8 million logic gates. It offers an advanced debugging software tool, as well.

The product's architecture, based on an array of concurrent custom processors, enables designers to perform in-circuit emulation and accelerated co-simulation in either dedicated or server modes to rapidly prototype multi-million gate ICs or full systems. CoBalt shares Quest II with Quickturn's System Realizer FPGA-based systems.

The CoBalt compiled code approach is designed to shorten time-to-emulation, while the modular architecture improves runtime performance and design capacity for verification of complex, deep-submicron designs.

The new product family features a modular emulation architecture jointly developed by IBM and Quickturn, marketed by Quickturn under an exclusive OEM agreement with IBM. It uses a broadcast interconnect approach among processors for performance advantages, like improved bandwidth and fast emulation speeds.

Each CoBalt emulation module can be used to emulate multiple independent designs simultaneously. Besides supporting individual designs with multiple, independent clocks, its partitioning capability enables the tool to be configured as an emulation or accelerated simulation server resource to support verification of different teams designing multiple ICs.

CoBalt is supported by Quickturn's Quest II emulation software and HDL-ICE software. The CoBalt emulation family is available in production immediately. List prices starts at $495,000 for an entry-level, 500,000-gate configuration.

Quickturn also introduced Q/Bridge, a software tool enabling integration of best-in-class commercial verification products with Quickturn's System Realizer and the CoBalt emulators. Q/Bridge is designed to enable third-party vendors of EDA tools to easily create co-simulation interfaces between their products and Quickturn's Quest II emulation software environment.

Q/Bridge also enables IC and system designers to apply behavioral testbenches to emulation environments, improving time-to-emulation and shortening the overall verification process for complex ICs and systems.

"Q/Bridge continues our strategy to provide an open, flexible emulation architecture and a comprehensive set of design verification solutions," said Keith Lobo, president and CEO of Quickturn. "Designers can now build suites that integrate Quickturn's emulation systems with other industry-leading verification tools for coverage from early behavioral/RTL code exploration to silicon prototype."

"With increased complexity fueled by deep submicron technology, IC and system designers require extremely robust verification environments to successfully realize their design concepts," said Mr. Zafar. "Customers want to leverage multiple technologies to meet their verification needs throughout every phase of the design cycle."

Q/Bridge allows integration of Quickturn's emulation systems with testbench generation tools, cycle-based simulators, full-timing simulators, software debug tools and C models for interactive exchange of vector stimuli. It enables the emulator to operate as a fast functional hardware accelerator leveraging users' existing behavioral testbenches in a co-simulation mode.

Q/Bridge is emulation-platform independent. It includes a hardware interface that links with Quickturn's System Realizer or CoBalt families, and the Q/Bridge testbench application programming interface (API) that links with the user's environment on a workstation.

With the new product, third-party vendors and users can perform emulation in a familiar, simulation-like environment. The API included in it runs on a workstation and interfaces with Quickturn's emulation hardware. Q/Bridge supports cycle-by-cycle and block-based communication protocols. It allows conducting debug sessions on the simulation side by setting breakpoints, single stepping and monitoring of internal nodes in the design. Simultaneously, the emulator's built-in logic analyzer can be activated to trap trigger conditions and trace data.