Embedded Systems Conference, 2000. San Jose - Beach Solutions, developer of the EASI-GENeration™ family of hardware-software interface tools for SOC designers, announces the introduction of two new generator products that allow designers of IP blocks to rapidly and reliably interface and migrate their designs to new bus architectures.

For any address-mapped peripheral, its specification can be partitioned into core functional logic and its associated bus interface. With in-built knowledge of the target bus, EASI-VHDL™ and EASI-Verilog™ will automatically create the required set of bus Registers and associated bus-interface logic in RTL, allowing the designer to concentrate on functional requirements of the core.

When used in conjunction with other EASI tools from Beach Solutions, a comprehensive and consistent suite of generated views are now available to SOC designers to accelerate otherwise error-prone manual tasks. For example not only can the peripheral IP core be migrated to a new architecture, but associated interface software (EASI macros written in standard ANSI ‘C’) can also be re-used.

Maintenance is simple, and consistency is guaranteed, with all views derived from a single reference file. Views produced include, device documentation, firmware access macros, test software and now bus interfaces in RTL.

Terry McCloskey, CEO of Beach Solutions commented: “with so much investment in the industry going into the development and test of new complex peripheral functions, embedded system’s developers are looking for ways to enable the Re-Use of such designs in many products. The goal is not only to achieve a better return on investment, but to provide a quicker route to market starting from proven technology. These two new Beach Solutions’ products provide our customers with an automated route for integrating their IP into Systems in the first place, and then Re-Use them time and time again”.

First supported are the bus interfaces to ARM AMBA APB (all variants), AHB and ASB busses. Other targets will follow shortly.

Notes on Beach Solutions’ EASI tools family:
EASI-GEN™ tools use a common hardware register description of a peripheral IP block or device to automatically generate consistent and reliable views used throughout the development of an embedded system. The descriptions can be of standard products, new FPGAs, ASICs or ASSPs. Input capture is via a standard file or a simple GUI. Generated views include firmware access functions (in C), 'C' reference manuals, device documentation, test code and HDL views.

EASI Programmer (EASI-P)™ is a further useful stand-alone programmer's aid that uses the access libraries created by EASI-GEN™ for rapid development of reliable and efficient application code and test code. A comprehensive library of functions and macros are presented that can be simply selected and inserted into the application development environment.

EASI Tools are useful for hardware developers doing chip design and test, software developers wanting a clean reliable programmers’ interface to hardware devices, and for design documentation. In a typical ‘System On a Chip’ design there will be 100's of registers, some with multiple bit-fields, and each needing several types of access functions. System designers have typically saved over 15-20% in their project development time by using EASI's, with the added advantage of an automatic and maintainable hardware-software interface translation, where many human errors otherwise often slip in.

Editorial notes:
Beach Solutions is a 5-year-old Software company previously trading as Roberts & Chamberlain with its headquarters registered in Great Chesterford, Cambridge, UK. It has extensive experience in embedded system hardware and software design including modeling and simulation technologies.

For further information please call Beach Solutions on +44 1189835705, email info@beachsolutions.com or visit the web site www.beachsolutions.com