Part 2 of this 4-part series reviews the role of virtual prototypes as stand-alone tools and their use in hybrid emulation for early software validation, a practice known as the “shift-left” methodology. It assesses the differences among these approaches, focusing on their pros and cons.
At a superficial level, emulation in the hardware design world is just a way to run a simulation faster. The design to be tested runs on the emulator, connected to whatever test mechanisms you desire, and the whole setup can run many orders of magnitude faster than it could if the design was running inside a software simulator. And … Read More
Synopsys hosts a regular lunch at DVCon each year (at least over the last few years I have checked), a nice meal and a show, opening a marketing update followed by 2-3 customer presentations on how they use Synopsys verification in their flows. This year’s event was moderated by Piyush Sancheti from Synopsys Verification marketing… Read More
Hybrid emulation is when part of the system is run in the emulator and part of the system is run in a virtual prototype. Typically a model of the processor(s) is run in the virtual platform and then the rest of the design is modeled by running the RTL on the emulator. I talked to Tom Borgstrom at Synopsys about what technology they have … Read More
