Mentor rolls out tool for platform design and verification

By Michael Santarini
EE Times
(08/13/01, 1:52 p.m. EST)

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SAN JOSE, Calif. — Mentor Graphics Corp. (Wilsonville, Ore.) has officially released its Platform Express design environment. The design cockpit aims to allow semiconductor houses and design groups to rapidly create, configure and verify processor platform-based, system-on-chip (Soc) designs.

John Wilson, business development manager for Mentor's SoC Verification Business Unit, said the tool will allow users in a graphics-based environment to quickly design platforms and then configure them to create SoC devices.

Using the tool, design teams build and configure a platform core and its corresponding peripherals and software in a virtual-prototype environment. The tool then automatically generates a custom-verification environment for the embedded-processor-centric portion of the design.

Automatic connections

"The tool creates everything down to a synthesizable netlist," said Wilson.

Using Platform Express, designers can browse through a library of available processors, memories and peripherals and drag and drop selected items into the tool's block editor.

Platform Express automatically creates the necessary connections between components, depending on a selection of standard buses, including Amba and VCI.

The tool automatically generates the design, as well as software to run on the design and stimulus to drive it. It then invokes verification tools, transparently generating and executing scripts. "It generates annotated simulation models with a brief description in XML," said Wilson. The tool automatically writes a set of generators, creating diagnostic code for each peripheral and memory component in the design. It currently generates setup files for Mentor's Xray, Seamless and ModelSim.

Designers can proceed to hardware/software co-verification using the Seamless co-verification tool or to RTL hardware verification using the ModelSim tool.

Mike Chen, product line director at Mentor, said the tool currently does not have the ability to build or update verification testbenches.

Mentor plans to offer the tool through a business model similar to the one used by Gillette Razor, which gives its razors away and makes money on the blades. In the case of Platform Express, Mentor is giving the tool away to end users. To use it effectively, however, customers must use Mentor's seamless co-verification tool, ModelSim simulator and the Xray debugger.

Wilson said that Mentor hopes to make money from intellectual-property vendors and semiconductor companies wishing to add their platforms to the tool's platform library.

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