ROOT

metadata

metadata

Semiconductors: EDA Front end designdrastically improve methodology for SoC and derivative designs

Magillem

Reusable methodologyand collaborative features

Graphical platform editor& predefined

automated operations

Digital, analog,mix design environment

Customize the automationof the platform for dedicated

applications

Support of virtual hierarchy

Large rangeof connectorsto EDA tools

Single sourcing SOC design informationin a standard IEEE format doubles efficiency

when managing specifications changes

Software that streamlineyour design and documentation flows

Business Case - Semiconductor

« The overall gain in efficiency, time and performance, combined with no-risk of consistency mismatch is an unprecedented ROI for our design teams all together »

About Semiconductors IndustrySemiconductors Industry designs and markets System-on-Chip platforms (SoC). SoCs contain in a unique highly integrated component all electronic circuits required to build an entire system offering all features for a dedicated purpose such as 3D video, GPS, wifi communication. SoCs save space and power while improving speed and performance. Designing a SoC amounts to produce a huge mass of files and documentation : hundreds of thousands of linked files and thousands of technical content documents. Our customer is a key supplier for industry leaders which include mobile operators and device manufacturers, it is actively engaged with most of the twenty largest OEM manufacturers.

BeforeTasks such as performance verification, HW design, HW verification, FPGA verification, and early SW development must be parallelized in order to shorten the overall development time. This kind of flow requires to maintain several representations of the design. All these representations were unfortunately disconnected from each other. They only contain the specific level of detail (aka abstraction level) required to complete the targeted task. A design representations is usually in a format often solely supported by the environment used to execute the task.In an ever changing and highly competitive environment such as the consumer market, product requirements are unfortunately moving targets. Each new or updated requirement forces the architects to modify the system specification. These updates are generally hard to handle especially when they occur late in the development cycle. Depending on the nature of the update, a change has to be manually applied to all the existing design representations. Similarly, problems found at any stage of the development process, have to be fixed in all the design representations. This process relies completely on good communication between several design teams. These teams are often working in different environments and can be geographically distributed. This makes this process tedious and error prone with always dramatic consequences.

GoalsThe customer wants to be able to very effectively respond to new product requirements without jeopardizing the quality of the product or missing a market window. Communicating design updates via a new version of the design specification document can be subject to misinterpretation. They want a centralized management of the specification with a mechanism to automatically propagate updated information to all the different environments.

SolutionThe first step was to adopt a format that can capture all the information shared by the different design representations. IP-XACT was the logical choice as it is the industry format specifically created for that purpose. The second step was the deployment of the Magillem tools. The Magillem tools allow the capture and maintenance of the IP-XACT description of all the aspects of the system such as component instantiation, design hierarchy, partitioning, hardware/software interfaces and abstraction levels. A collection of built-in generators and user defined ones can then extract from a database, using a powerful API, the information about the fully elaborated design. Each design representation can then be automatically created with a specific generator. The coupling of these tools with the Magillem Content Platform further extended the capability by linking any content fragment such as, for example, documentation, simulation files or timing constraints to the design elements of the IP-XACT description. This solution offers a fully reentrant design flow. Changes occurring anywhere can be pushed to the common design database from where all the representations can be automatically updated.

AfterThe single sourcing environment offered by the Magillem tools helped double the efficiency of all the teams whenever they had to react to a specification change. Furthermore it virtually eliminated any risk of consistency mismatch between the different environments. This drastically increased the overall quality of the product being built.Lastly it helped reduce significantly the development time and improve the time to market.

Magillem SA – 251 rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin 75010 Paris - France - +33 1 40 21 35 50 – www.magillem.com

Magillem Platorm Assembly

MPA transforms the complex process of assembling HW platforms of any size

into a set of easily manageable tasks. The tool can hide the complexity through

features such as bus detection.It also allows the full automation of

very tedious tasks. The direct benefits for the user are:

➔ Dramatic increaseof productivity

➔ Better design reliability➔ Repeatability of the process➔ Scalability of the solution

Support for both RTL and ESL flows benefits all the product

development teams

MPA is one of the key components of the Magillem single sourcing solution

targeted at:- HW design

- Verification- Embedded Software development

➔ Capture the platform onceand generate all its different

representations

Creation of a fully elaborated design database that becomes the foundation

for the automation of more advanced flows such as Power insertion

or DFT insertion

Abstraction of design complexity(bus interface detection)

Tool for assembly of any HW platformSupport for Top down or Bottom up

assembly flowsFull design hierarchy management

Partitioning

KawaharaTsunemori

Eda Expert