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Quickturn Introduces a New Family of High-Performance Multimedia Verification Environments
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 14, 2001--
Quickturn, a company of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN),
today announced the immediate availability of complete verification
environments specifically designed for the verification of complex
emerging applications in the consumer product marketplace. These
tailored environments assist in the development and verification of
set-top boxes, high-definition televisions (HDTVs), PC graphics, and
the multimedia components of third-generation (3G) wireless products.
``Traditional graphics and multimedia design blocks are converging
into high-growth applications such as set-top boxes and wireless
phones,'' said Guy Cortez, solutions marketing manager at
Quickturn(TM). ``Industry analysts predict designers will have major
validation challenges during the integration of those complex blocks,
often causing low product quality and delays in product introductions.
The Quickturn verification environments address these challenges by
providing customers a complete hardware-software verification
environment to ensure high quality, first-pass silicon and reliable
software. With these enhanced high-performance environments available
today, Quickturn is well positioned to provide customized verification
solutions for projects as soon as the developers require them.''
``The Quickturn multimedia verification environments deliver
emulation speeds up to 10,000 times faster than
register-transfer-level (RTL) software simulation tools,'' said Gavin
Zawalski, vertical solutions engineering (VSE) manager at Quickturn.
``Obtaining high speeds from designers' verification environments is
becoming a key priority for working on system-on-chip (SoC)
applications. These designs require the integration of large amounts
of software content and memory into the design. The software
architecture in Quickturn SpeedBridge(TM) products makes it easy for
designers to customize solutions for various formats, such as the
common intermediate format (CIF).''
New Environments Help Customers Solve Three Key Problems
- The gap between ``real-world'' speeds and emulation speeds. In
addition to analyzing the raw data, developers can now hear
and see real-time audio and video prior to tape-out when they
verify complex multimedia application designs. The required
rate adaptation is automatically managed by the SpeedBridge
peripherals.
- The difficulty of stress testing large and complex designs.
Quickturn's customized and third-party data streamers can
transfer large amounts of data from and into the emulator at
high speeds. Designers can now increase the number of stress
tests for multimedia applications by four orders of magnitude
and run a large number of frames in minutes rather than days
or weeks. The result is a reduction of regression testing time
by months.
- The inability to simultaneously verify hardware and large
amounts of software content. Quickturn's multimedia
environments enable designers to take advantage of
hardware-software co-verification strategies. These
environments provide programmers early access to the embedded
processors standard debuggers that are connected to the
emulated design.
- Developers verify the interactions between reduced instruction
set computer (RISC) or digital signal processing (DSP)
processors, and high-bandwidth custom logic such as video
compression co-processors.
Early Adopters Test New Environments
``Quickturn's Time-to-Market Engineering (TtME(TM)) group responded
quickly to our request to customize our recently purchased Video
SpeedBridge. This enabled us to quickly generate and analyze video
input streams for the development of our state-of-the-art monitors and
projectors,'' said Patrick Scheer, validation manager at SP3D, a
subsidiary of Philips Semiconductor.
``The Quickturn multimedia environment saved us weeks of
verification time,'' said Gerhard Petrowitsch, project leader at SP3D.
``When you're working to develop high-quality products and you want to
gain a competitive advantage, getting to market several weeks early is
priceless.''
``We are very happy with the capability of Video SpeedBridge to
store image data to disk for analysis and view images interactively,''
said Dr.Yasoo Harada, manager of the System LSI Design Division of
Sanyo Electric Co., Ltd. ``Quickturn's Video SpeedBridge product saved
us money in several ways. First, the cost of the product was quite
reasonable compared with other solutions on the market. Second, it is
easy-to-use and, therefore, we did not have to spend valuable time
getting the product to work. Finally, the performance we achieved
using the entire emulation environment saved weeks in our schedule.''
Multimedia Environments Description
The new Quickturn multimedia environments feature an enhanced
version of Quickturn's high-performance Video SpeedBridge and the new
PCI-X SpeedBridge, in addition to existing SpeedBridge products such
as Audio, AGP (2X, 4X), PCI, and RGB. Quickturn also offers special
interfaces to third-party multimedia streamers and third-party IP
cores. These environments are integrated with Quickturn verification
systems and support the following features:
- Hardware-software co-verification with support for new bus
standards. The new PCI-X SpeedBridge enables programmers to
develop and debug embedded software running on a PC at normal
speeds (33 MHz bus speed for PCI and 66 MHz for PCI-X), while
designs are executed in a Quickturn emulator. The PCI-X
SpeedBridge supports PCI and PCI-X modes, PCI burst, non-burst
transactions, and multiple PCI-X split-completion
transactions.
- Hardware software co-verification with support for embedded
processors. Using the Quickturn component adapter boards
(CABs) -- that include such chips as the ARM7TDMI and ARM920T
-- designers can now debug emulated designs in parallel with
embedded software at a rate of a million instructions per
second (MIPS), dramatically reducing verification cycles.
- ``Live'' source and digital source capabilities. The unique
environments can source ``live'' or pre-recorded video data from
devices such as camcorders and digital cameras to the emulated
design in the range of two MHz.
- Video data-capture and playback. For the first time, these new
enhancements to the multimedia verification environments allow
the capture of video data in the range of 10 MHz. They also
support video streams of up to 60 GB in length. In addition,
the environments can convert digital signals sent from the
emulator for interactive playback into ``live devices'' such as
LCDs, and capture the data to disk for analysis. Quickturn has
developed unique software to receive and identify incorrect
data and find specific pixels that are not compliant with a
specified format. Video SpeedBridge supports numerous YUV
formats, as well as 24-bit RGB and Center for Communication
Interface Research (CCIR) 656 formats for both source and
capture.
- Audio data-capture. Audio SpeedBridge supports the Inter-IC
Sound (I2S) audio format and supports up to two channels
(e.g., left and right channel) of captured audio data.
- Digital broadcast industry standard streamers. Wavetek, Wandel
& Goltermann test platforms can be connected to Quickturn
verification systems through a custom interface supplied by
Quickturn. These streamers can generate, capture and analyze
data for protocols such as MPEG2 and Digital Video
Broadcasting (DVB). They offer key solutions for satellite,
cable network, digital TV, and set-top box applications.
Pricing and Product Availability
Quickturn designed the multimedia environments to work with the
entire family of Quickturn verification systems: MercuryPlus(TM),
CoBALTPlus(TM), and the Rapid Prototyping System (RPS(TM)). These
complete environments are available today. U.S. list price depends on
configuration. For more information, contact a Quickturn sales
representative at 408/914-6000. Outside of North America, contact the
Quickturn representative in your area
(www.quickturn.com/about/location.htm).
About Quickturn
Quickturn, a Cadence company, is the leading provider of
high-performance verification solutions and Time-to-Market Engineering
(TtME(TM)) services for the design and verification of complex IC and
electronic systems. Developers of high-performance computing,
multimedia, graphics, and communications systems use Quickturn
products and services. For more information, visit the Quickturn web
site at www.quickturn.com, call 408/914-6000, or send email to
info@quickturn.com.
About Cadence
Cadence is the largest supplier of electronic design automation
products, methodology services, and design services used to accelerate
and manage the design of semiconductors, computer systems, networking
and telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, and a variety
of other electronics-based products. With approximately 5,700
employees and 2000 revenues of approximately $1.3 billion, Cadence has
sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the
world. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and traded on
the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CDN. More information
about the company, its products, and services is available at
www.cadence.com.
Note to Editors: Cadence and the Cadence logo are registered
trademarks and Quickturn, CoBALTPlus, MercuryPlus, RPS, SpeedBridge,
and TtME are trademarks of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Contact:
Quickturn, A Cadence Company
Kristin Boucher, 408/914-6635
kristin@quickturn.com
or
Armstrong Kendall, Inc.
Laura Garrett, 503/672-4690
laura@akipr.com
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