Posts Tagged ‘VHDL’
Wednesday, February 28th, 2018
When should we use the term “Vision for Everything”, as vision-based applications are entering various industries? It’s been a few years since the emergence of Embedded Vision and we see that it’s being used in a wide range of applications including Security, Medical, Smart homes, Robotics, Transportations, Automotive Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and Augmented Reality (AR).
This is the first in a series of blogs explaining what you need to know to start designing Embedded Vision applications which can be used in ADAS, from choosing the right device and tools to demystifying the vision algorithms used in automotive applications and how to implement them into FPGAs.
ADAS consists of two main parts, vision and sensor fusion. Cameras used in a smart car can provide the information such as object detection, classification and tracking. However, they don’t provide the distance between the vehicle and obstacles needed to prevent a collision. To do that, sensors such as LIDAR or RADAR come to play.
In this series of blogs, we will mainly focus on the vision side of the ADAS; but will cover sensor fusion in the future. The main goal of this series of blogs is to give an in-depth knowledge of Aldec’s complete ADAS reference design which includes 360-Degree Surrounding View, Driver Drowsiness Detection and Smart-Rear View.
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Tags: acceleration, ARM, embedded, FPGA, hardware, verilog, VHDL, Xilinx
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Wednesday, October 18th, 2017
 For a long time I have been a fan of code coverage tools that are embedded into the simulators themselves, and which give you the ability to switch easily between the code and the coverage results. It is particularly helpful to have a way of navigating the hierarchy, selecting a coverage result and then being able to look into the source code and make changes.
I recently had occasion to explain to someone how the feature works in Aldec’s Riviera-PRO, and to reflect on the tool developments that led to this great capability. As you may be aware, Aldec has a number of legacy coverage tools that allow you to view the coverage results from within the simulator; and which give you easy access to the coverage results and the corresponding lines of code. With the introduction of our unified coverage database – in .acdb format – it became possible to see the code coverage results in a more flexible format. The biggest boost, in my opinion, was the introduction of a cross-probing capability.
For those of you who are wondering how to use this feature.
- Open Riviera-PRO 2016.06 or newer and run your design with Coverage Enabled.
- Open the datasets window (View-> Hierarchy and Objects-> Datasets).
- Right-click in the window and select Add.
- Add the .acdb file associated with your design (it should show up as Simulation n, where n is number).
- Click on the newly added database.
For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: coverage, Riviera-PRO, verification, verilog, VHDL
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Thursday, June 15th, 2017
‘The cloud’ has been an industry buzz word for some time now and whilst the initial focus was on data storage and sharing – and spawned the likes of Dropbox – ‘cloud computing’ is currently the latest trend. For instance, Amazon’s cloud platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), gives users access to servers and a range of applications. Storage is available as before but so too now are dedicated relational databases; which in Amazon’s case is provides through a different service.
Enterprise businesses are taking advantage of cloud computing platforms, and for a number reasons. These include pay-as-go (as opposed to investing considerable cap ex), speed and flexibility (resources and storage can be made available quickly), and one is spared the headache of maintaining a mass of IT hardware and keeping on top of software license renewals.
Also, earlier this year Amazon announced EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) F1, a compute instance with FPGAs that users can program to perform hardware accelerations. The F1 instance includes an FPGA developer Amazon Machine Image (AMI) which includes a development environment with scripts and tools for code compilation and design simulation.
It is expected the primary users of EC2 F1 will be software developers, working on complex and compute-intensive algorithms for which FPGAs lend themselves particularly well. For instance, High Performance Computing will increasingly exploit FPGA technology.
But let’s not forget one of the most important roles that FPGAs have been playing in our industry – EDA – for a number of decades: hardware acceleration for ASIC prototyping purposes.
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Tags: Active-HDL, Emulation, FPGA-based hardware emulation platform, hardware, Hardware Emulation, HES-DVM, mixed language simulations, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, system c, system verilog, utilise Virtex-7, verilog, VHDL, Virtex UltraScale FPGAs, Virtex-7
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Tuesday, December 15th, 2015
FPGA designers using VHDL have three choices: Stick with VHDL, switch to SystemVerilog, or.. use the best of both. This guest blog from Doug Perry, Senior Member Technical Staff at Doulos, outlines the pros and cons of each.
The latest crop of FPGA devices are enormous when compared to ASICs that were built not that long ago. Verifying these ASICs required detailed plans, multiple tools, and sometimes special languages. Verification was key because the cost of a respin was prohibitive. FPGA designers using VHDL have three choices: Stick with VHDL, switch to SystemVerilog, or.. use the best of both. This guest blog from Doug Perry, Senior Member Technical Staff at Doulos, outlines the pros and cons of each.
The same is not necessarily true of FPGAs because they can simply be re-programmed when an error is found. However the cost of finding the error in the lab can still be very expensive. This is related to the fact that the number of LUTs available in the device has skyrocketed, but the number of IO pins has not. Therefore getting visibility into the inner workings of the device from outside becomes much more difficult. Finding the source of an error therefore also becomes increasingly difficult. To counteract this problem, designers need to find errors before the device gets into the lab. To do this they need to adopt ASIC-like verification methodologies.
Tags: doug perry, doulos, FPGA, resources, systemverilog, uvm, verification, VHDL, Webinar
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Thursday, May 15th, 2014
Alex Grove, FirstEDA Applications Specialist, was kind enough to author a guest blog for Aldec. Here’s an excerpt:
Here in Europe, I recently had the opportunity to work with Jim Lewis, OS-VVM Chief Architect and IEEE 1076 Working Group Chair, on the first Advanced VHDL Testbenches & Verification training course. This training, held in Bracknell, UK, was attended by engineers from several major European system companies who design and verify programmable devices (FPGAs). VHDL is by far the dominate language used by Europe’s system companies for the design and verification of FPGAs, however it is unclear to many how to enhance their verification with VHDL. What I have found is that experienced FPGA design engineers (including myself) are not utilising the VHDL language for verification.
Jim Lewis introduces VHDL’s verification capabilities, including new VHDL 2008 features and the Open Source VHDL Verification Methodology (OSVVM). OSVVM provides a methodology for testbench development and verification packages that provide functional coverage and random value generation. (more…)
Tags: advanced vhdl testbenches, Aldec, bist, built-in self test, coverage, design, design and verify programmable devices, finite-state machine, FPGA, fpga design engineers, fsm, functional coverage, ieee 1076 working group chair, ieee 1149.1 tap, open source vhdl verification methodology, os-vvm chief architect, osvvm, random value generation, randomization, test access port controller, test mode select signal, testbench development, tms signal, verification, verification packages, verification training course, verification with vhdl, VHDL, vhdl 2008 features, vhdl osvvm CoveragePkg to a fsm
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Wednesday, December 11th, 2013
 Here at the Aldec corporate office, we have a sign that reminds us all of our mission in the field of Technology. It reads, ‘To deliver solutions that provide the highest productivity to value ratio; supporting our existing products while delivering innovation to current and new technologies’. We have similar statements to reaffirm our commitment in the areas of Research, Alliances, and Culture – we call it our “Aldec DNA”.
 Because we genuinely want to have a clear understanding of our user’s requirements and methodology preferences, we continually engage in surveys and interviews. The knowledge we gain better positions us to support our existing products and to deliver that support where it matters the most to our users. If you’ve ever had that frustrating experience where your favorite tool no longer supports your methodology of choice – then you understand why this is so important.
Our Commitment to the VHDL Community
When it comes to VHDL-2008, we have learned from our customers that many are happy using the methodology – and continue to successfully deliver cutting-edge technology with it. So, while we remain committed to delivering innovation to new technologies, our R&D teams also invest a great deal of development time to ensure that Aldec solutions continue to offer a high level of support for popular languages like VHDL.
For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: Active-HDL, advanced verification platform, Aldec, aldec design rule checker, aldec dna, aldec simulators, alint, bitvis, do-254/ed-80 vhdl rule plug-ins, eda industry, embedded psl, FPGA Design, functional coverage, HDL, highest productivity to value ratio, ieee, ieee 1076-1993 Standard, ieee 1076-2002 vhdl standard, ieee 1076-2008 standard, ieee standard, ieee vhdl, intelligent testbench methodology, open source vhdl verification methodology, osvvm, psl embedded in vhdl, randomization, Riviera-PRO, simulation, source encryption, standards, starc vhdl, vector implementation of integer arithmetic, verification, VHDL, vhdl community, vhdl designs, vhdl testbench, vhpi interfacing to C/C++ code
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Tuesday, September 24th, 2013
 Jim Lewis, VHDL Training Expert at SynthWorks (and founding member of OSVVM, which Aldec was an early adopter of) was kind enough to author a guest blog for Aldec. Here’s an excerpt:
After presenting a conference paper on how to do OSVVM-style constrained random and intelligent coverage (randomization based on functional coverage holes), I received a great question, “Why Randomize?”
The easiest way to answer this is with an example. Let’s look at a FIFO test – test a FIFO, write to it, read from it, write to it and read from it simultaneously, fill it and see that additional writes are held off successfully, and empty it and see that additional reads are held off successfully.
Most certainly a FIFO can be tested using a directed test (just code, no randomization). The following simulation waveform shows diffcount (the number of words in the FIFO) for a directed test. The lowest value is empty. The highest is full. Using this, you can visually check off all of the required conditions and see that the FIFO is indeed tested.
For the rest of this article, visit the Aldec Design and Verification Blog.
Tags: Aldec, coverage, fifo test, functional coverage holes, intelligent coverage, os-vvm, osvvm-style constrained random, randomization, systemverilog, VHDL, vhdl testbench techniques
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Wednesday, August 28th, 2013
 As the proud Product Manager of Aldec’s FPGA Design Simulation solution, I am excited (like it was my first Cranberries concert) to announce that Active-HDL™ is celebrating 16 years since its initial release in 1997. Active-HDL has not merely stood the test of time, it has dominated the FPGA market like a Hulk Hogan smackdown with powerful simulation performance and debugging tools.
The key to Active-HDL’s long-term success lies in Aldec’s customer-centric philosophy. Simply put, we really do listen closely to our users and invest heavily in our tools. For this reason, continued simulation performance optimizations from release to release enable users to benefit from Active-HDL’s faster simulation even as the size of FPGA designs continues to grow.
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Tags: Active-HDL, Aldec, assertions, cen, chinese electronics news, co-simulation, coverage, debugging, debugging tools, design, digital, documentation, FPGA, fpga design simulation solution, fpga designs, HDL, ieee, matlab, os-vvm, project management, semiconductor industry, simulation, simulation platform, standards, top fpga design, university, verification, verification platform, verilog, VHDL, Xilinx
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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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Tuesday, July 30th, 2013
 Retargeting Legacy Designs for New Technology
Digital design has come a long way since its inception from drawing schematic on paper, to CAD tools which can be used to draw schematics, and to today’s most popular (and efficient) process of describing designs through HDLs.
I recently encountered a customer with a legacy design developed in block diagram format. If he hadn’t been an Aldec customer, he might have been stuck. Fortunately, Aldec Active-HDL™ provides utilities for importing legacy schematic based designs from Xilinx® Foundation Series, ViewLogic™, ViewDraw™, Active-CAD™ or any schematic tools that can output an EDIF netlist.
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Tags: active-cad, active-cad format, Active-HDL, Aldec, design, eda tools, edif netlist, importing legacy schematic based designs, schematic tools, verilog, VHDL, viewdraw, viewlogic, Xilinx, xilinx foundation series, xilinx virtex
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