Posts Tagged ‘verification’
Thursday, August 22nd, 2013
Dr. Benjamin Carrion Schafer, Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Polytechnic University (and longtime fan of Aldec’s latest offering, CyberworkBench from NEC) was kind enough to author a guest blog for Aldec. Here’s an excerpt:
My first encounter with NEC’s CyberWorkBench (CWB) was in 2003 while attending DAC. Like most people, I was surprised to see a big Japanese company offering EDA tools. NEC is definitely known more for its consumer products and telecommunication equipment. I have to admit, the main reason I stopped at their booth – was that they had hired a magician.
This magician told the audience he would teach us a trick and give us a set of magic cards if we stayed until the end of the presentation. I did and I received my set of magic cards (which I still keep). At the same time I also became a CWB user and even wound up working for NEC.
As an assistant Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, I currently teach advanced VLSI courses and use CWB. It has some amazing capabilities. Let’s start with the fact that it supports ANSI-C and SystemC. Although SystemC might be a step in the right direction to have a unique standardized IEEE language, supported by all main HLS tools, it is not very intuitive and takes some time to master (especially if the user does not have a C++ background). Here is where ANSI-C support becomes very handy. Most people do know ANSI-C and it is very straightforward to convert any ANSI-C SW description into synthesizable C code.
For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: Aldec, ansi-c, c/systemc code, dac, design, distributorship, hls, ide, nec cyberworkbench, qor visualization tool, rtl simulation, SoC, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, systemc, Validation, verification, verification process
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Monday, August 12th, 2013
Fast Track to SystemVerilog for Verilog Users
The ability to adopt methodologies and get up to speed quickly is critical in today’s fast moving environment. Aldec offers Fast Track™ ONLINE trainings designed for busy engineers to increase their productivity and enhance their skill level from the comfort of their own browser.
Got SystemVerilog? While it may be a fashionable topic among verification engineers, it’s generally a shunned subject among hardware designers. While there are many good reasons for this (overgrown size of the SystemVerilog standard, expensive options required to use many language features in simulation, poor support in low-end tools, etc.), designers familiar with classical Verilog can benefit greatly from the features available in the Design Subset of SystemVerilog. Designing state machines is one excellent example. It is as easy and elegant in SystemVerilog as it is in VHDL – and those machines even synthesize in better tools!
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Tags: Aldec, design, design subset of systemverilog, fast track online trainings, simulation, system verilog, training, verification, verilog, VHDL
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Monday, July 22nd, 2013
 To Accelerate DSP Design Development
If we’re being honest, human beings, especially engineers, are lazy. Let’s face it, most inventions ever made were created for the sole purpose of making our lives easier. The same goes for the manner in which we create our designs. In the not so distant past, engineers were drawing designs by hand on huge trace paper, placing them one below the other to form layers. This sounds like hard work to me! The lazy me would have wanted a smart (read: easy) solution to this process. Then along comes the EDA industry, which Aldec has been part of since 1984, making it much easier for us to do our designs.
Some might argue that EDA was born out not out of laziness, but in fact neccessity, due to increasing design complexity. True, it is impossible to imagine how the pencil and paper method could even work today. The point is it didn’t, and we now have automated the process to such an extent all you need do is enter some parameters in a tool wizard.
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Tags: accelerate dsp design development, Aldec, co-simulation, data analysis, data visualization, debugging, design, dsp algorithm, eda industry, edif cells, hdl code, hdl simulator, matlab, Riviera-PRO, simulink, verification, verilog modules, vhdl entities
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Wednesday, June 26th, 2013
 An Interview with FAA Consultant DER, Randall Fulton
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to sit down with an avionics industry certification expert, FAA Consultant Designated Engineering Representative (DER), Randall Fulton. We began discussing common mistakes in DO-254 projects, and then branched out to many different areas including future of DO-254, industry engineering best practices, and his advice to organizations new to DO-254.
Louie: In your experience, what are the common mistakes in DO-254 projects?
Randall: Starting certification liaison activities and the SOI-1 planning audit after the design already exists. Many projects also need to read the additional guidance from the FAA in Order 8110.105 to understand the impact and be prepared to show the data to satisfy the Order. Organizations also underestimate the resources required for a project. This includes staffing as well as managing all the data. Another common area is not appreciating the impact of effective requirements writing skills.
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Tags: Aldec, compliance, do-254, FPGA, fpga interface, pld vendors, safety-critical, SoC, standards, verification
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Tuesday, June 11th, 2013
Functional Verification Insights from Austin
I just returned back to the office from the 50th Design Automation Conference (DAC) which took place in Austin, TX, on June 2—6. As I began compiling my trip report, I thought that I might share some of my observations, especially for those who couldn’t attend this industry event but still wanted to gain some insight.
Conference itself
One of the reasons I like DAC is that it has always been the main industry event, attracting people from all over the world, and provides participants with the opportunity to meet most of their key customers, ecosystem partners, and competitors in a single location. From an exhibitor’s perspective, DAC is mainly about engaging with attendees on the floor, learning about their current and anticipated challenges, and educating them on how they can innovate and succeed using our product offerings.
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Tags: cdc, dac, design automation conference, driver software verification, ecosystem partners, fpga-based prototyping, Functional Verification, high level synthesis, hls, hw/sw co-verification, mixed-signal simulation, multimillion gate soc, multiple clock domains, Riviera-PRO, SoC, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, SoC Verification, spec-tracer, system development, system verilog, systemverilog-based uvm, uvm-compliant environments, verification, verification ips, vips
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