SoC Integration using IP Lifecycle Management Methodology

From the Methodics side they offer IP lifecycle management so that SoC design companies have control over both the design and integration of internal and external design elements: libraries, Analog, digital, stand-alone IP. You get traceability and easier reuse by coupling the IP creators with every IP consumer. Collaboration between designers is enabled by use of a centralized catalog, automated notifications, flexible permissions and integrated analytics.

Related blog – CEO Interview, Simon Butler of Methodics

Over on the Magillem side you find tools that are IP-Xact based which is derived from IP-reuse methodology to help solve the challenge of maintaining consistency between different representations of your system, by using a single source of data for your specification, hardware design, embedded software and even documentation.

The Methodics tool is called ProjectIC (yellow), and here’s how it works with Magillem (red) at a conceptual level:

Now that we’ve seen the big picture, let’s delve one layer lower and start to look at how these two tools create a workflow:

Related blog – IC Design Management, Build or Buy?

This workflow will benefit designers in several ways:

• IP standardization through IP-XACT
• Fast IP configuration
• Intelligent IP integration
• IP design rule checking
• Hierarchical IP version & bug tracking
• IP cataloging
• Automated Magillem reassembly when a workspace is updated
• Results annotated back to the IP version
• Notifications automatically sent based on subscription model
• Takes advantage of the ProjectIC triggers /workflow engine
• Plugs a major hole in the RTL assembly methodology

Engineers are always curious about how integrations work under the hood, so the engines from ProjectIC and Magillem communicate with each other transparent to the end-user, so that each workspace load and update action triggers an executable script that runs Magillem in the user’s workspace:

Related blog – 5 Reasons Why Platform Based Design Can Help Your Next SoC

Stepping up a level, here’s what a tool user sees when running the ProjectIC tool:

So this integration is up and running, ready to help out today. The next version of the integration has three refinements:

• IP-XACT attributes auto-populated on IPs in ProjectIC
• Changing configurations will automatically trigger IP-XACT attribute refresh
• Results of multiple workflows will be visible in a single pane

Summary
They say that necessity is the mother of all invention, so it’s refreshing to see that two EDA vendors have taken the time to define, build and test an integration between their tools that will directly help out SoC projects in their quest to be bug-free, and work the first time.