CoWare Announces Breakthrough in Complex SoC Design

Bus Architecting with Second-Generation Interface Synthesis(TM) Now Available

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and PARIS, March 5 /PRNewswire/ -- CoWare(TM), Inc., has enhanced its CoWare N2C(TM) design system with second-generation Interface Synthesis(TM) capabilities, enabling designers to develop optimal architectures for the latest complex SoC (system-on-chip) designs. These capabilities solve one of the most difficult problems in today's designs -- finding the bus architecture that gives the best tradeoff of high performance and low power. This design decision has a huge impact on the end product, but the latest generation of SoC buses allow so many possibilities that designers can only take their best guess at the optimal architecture. CoWare N2C removes the guesswork in making these tradeoffs and implementing the designs. This capability has been proven in production designs using the AMBA® 2.0 on-chip interconnect and STMicroelectronic's STBus.

"Many of our new SoC designs use the advanced features available in the STBus," stated Jean-Marc Chateau, Director of Design, Consumer & Microcontroller Groups, STMicroelectronics. "We worked with CoWare to enhance CoWare N2C to easily build platform variants exploiting these advanced features. We've found that different architectures can make a tremendous difference in power and performance in the end products -- up to a 50 percent difference in performance in one case."

In addition, CoWare worked closely with ARM to develop this new technology for STMicroelectronics and other ARM Partners.

"As more designers take advantage of the flexibility and ease of implementation that AMBA technology offers, they need to be able to explore the wide range of design possibilities open to them," stated Jonathan Morris, ARM's System Infrastructure Program Manager. "Now, with CoWare N2C, our mutual customers can efficiently test different AMBA technology-based architectures to find the optimal trade-off of performance and power for their latest portable consumer devices."

Today's leading interconnect solutions allow many architectural alternatives to be explored, but this carries a significant simulation overhead for the manual RTL designer. CoWare's unique design system provides the tools and methodology to model, synthesize and evaluate different bus architectures quickly.

How It Works

SoC designers are now finding that complex interconnect architectures must be simulated and analyzed with sufficient accuracy before committing to an implementation. CoWare N2C allows designers to build an accurate simulation model for different configurations very quickly. The architect specifies graphically which bus masters connect to which bus slaves via which node. Each node produces a distinct bus or bus layer.

CoWare's new second-generation Interface Synthesis technology, configured by this high-level input, automatically synthesizes the bus interconnect matrixes and crossbar switches, which are at the heart of these multi-layer buses. The necessary arbitration logic for multiple bus masters, along with all other bus logic, is also synthesized.

Following simulation, CoWare N2C's powerful analysis tools let designers check the performance of different configurations. To change from one bus configuration to another, the designer simply adjusts the high-level input and re-synthesizes.

Once the optimal bus architecture is established, the hardware design can be validated and implemented in an RTL-based design flow. This significantly speeds the hardware design process.

Availability

CoWare's second generation Interface Synthesis technology has already been deployed in production designs and is now in limited release to a select group of leading systems and semiconductor houses for designs using AMBA on-chip interconnect or STBus.

About AMBA Technology

AMBA is ARM's open-specification for on-chip interface and interconnect. The AMBA 2.0 specification is available by downloading from the ARM web site and, subject to a brief license agreement, there is no charge for its use or royalties to pay.

The AMBA specification has become a de facto standard for the semiconductor industry and has been adopted by more than 90 percent of ARM's Partners, and a large number of other IP providers. The specification has been downloaded by more than 2,000 engineers and successfully implemented in many hundreds of ASIC designs.

With a wide third-party IP base and extensive EDA tool support from many of the industry's leading EDA suppliers, AMBA technology provides a top-to- bottom solution for interface-based design of high-performance systems. Since the AMBA interface is processor and technology-independent, it enhances the reusability of peripheral and system macrocells across a wide range of applications.

ARM remains totally committed to developing the long-term AMBA technology roadmap in close consultation with our Partners. This will ensure that AMBA interface-based methodologies remain at the forefront of high-performance system design.

About CoWare

As the leading supplier of tools for system-level electronic design automation (EDA), CoWare, Inc. provides a platform-based design methodology that can cut system-on-a-chip (SoC) design time in half. As a founder and leader of SystemC, CoWare is driving the industry towards a unifying system design language. The CoWare software is employed by major systems, IP and semiconductor companies including Alcatel, ARM, Canon, Fujitsu, InterDigital, Matsushita, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sanyo, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Tensilica and Toshiba. CoWare was recognized as the 5th fastest-growing private company in Silicon Valley in 2000 (1). For more information, visit www.CoWare.com.

NOTE: CoWare, CoWare N2C, and Interface Synthesis are trademarks of CoWare, Inc.

ARM and AMBA are registered trademarks of ARM Limited. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. "ARM" is used to represent ARM Holdings plc (LSE: ARM and Nasdaq: ARMHY); its operating company ARM Limited; and the regional subsidiaries ARM, INC.; ARM KK; ARM Korea Limited; ARM Taiwan; and ARM France SAS.