Samsung's ViP Design Methodology Reduces SoC Design Time Up to 40 Percent
SEOUL, South Korea—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Sept. 13, 2004—
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a leader in advanced
semiconductor technology, today revealed a hardware/software co-design
methodology that will reduce overall design time for the company's
System-on-Chip (SoC) products by up to 40 percent. The Virtual
Platform (ViP) approach will ultimately result in faster production of
Samsung logic components while giving the company's customers a
time-to-market advantage.
Samsung developed the ViP design methodology in partnership with
EDA vendors to address the ever-increasing complexity of SoC design
challenges. Today's exploding market for multi-function consumer
products requires more on-chip firmware as well as transistors,
complicating and extending the design process. Using the ViP
methodology, simulation speeds are hundreds or even thousands of times
faster than that of a traditional RTL approach while maintaining more
than 90 percent accuracy over RTL.
With conventional RTL design methodology, it wasn't possible to
design and optimize software before the field programmable gate array
(FPGA) prototype was ready. In addition, it was hard to identify
whether the error was due to hardware or software. Using the ViP
approach, software designers can now prepare fully optimized and
error-minimized software before the development of RTL code, reducing
the SoC design time by up to 40 percent.
Senior Vice President Soo-kwan Eo of the SoC R&D Center at Samsung
Electronics, who leads the ViP development team, said: "The ViP
methodology has improved system design productivity and reduced SoC
design and software development cycles. ViP will help us develop
highly integrated devices ahead of the competition to maintain our
market leadership."
Some of Samsung's SoC products have already benefited from the ViP
methodology. It has been applied to develop the flash memory card
controller that is already in mass production, enabling engineers to
improve certain chip performance such as the data read operation by
more than 30 percent.
Samsung's ViP design methodology has also proven its applicability
to SoC products with multiple processors. For example, Samsung's HD
digital TV SoC, modem chip for 3G mobile phone, and mobile application
processor devices have shown excellent results. Samsung will expand
the use of ViP within its logic product line to encompass other
various SoC devices.
About Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. is a global leader in semiconductor,
telecommunication, digital media and digital convergence technologies
with 2003 parent company sales of US$36.4 billion and net income of
US$5.0 billion. Employing approximately 88,000 people in 89 offices in
46 countries, the company consists of six main business units:
Corporate Technology Operations, Digital Appliance Business, Digital
Media Business, LCD Business, Semiconductor Business and
Telecommunication Network Business. Recognized as one of the fastest
growing global brands, Samsung Electronics is the world's largest
producer of color monitors, color TVs, memory chips, TFT-LCDs and
VCRs. For more information, visit www.samsung.com.
Contact:
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
SungIn Cho, 82-2-727-7848
sungin.cho@samsung.com
