Summit Design Expands Its ESL Solution Suite with Vista 1.1 to Deliver Advanced Analysis and Debug for Expert and Novice SystemC Users; Powerful Automatic Transaction-Level Modeling Viewer Provides Comprehensive System-Level Design Observability
LOS ALTOS, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—June 1, 2005—
Summit Design, Inc., a leading provider of electronic
system-level (ESL) design solutions, today announced the release of
Vista(TM) 1.1, an integrated development environment (IDE) for rapid
SystemC-based analysis and debug. The first-of-its-kind native
source-based SystemC platform, Vista is newly equipped with a
sophisticated transaction-level modeling (TLM) viewer that -- working
with the designer's SystemC simulator of choice -- provides the
dramatically enhanced observability of system-level design behavior
necessary for debug. SystemC verification and optimization has
delivered a significant simulation speed-up, but the time benefit has
been largely lost in debug. Vista helps to solve this problem. Vista
enables designers to automatically view communication protocols and
system-level interfaces, and to identify transaction function calls
between blocks, without the time-consuming manual code instrumentation
that has historically been necessary in SystemC design environments.
The Vista TLM Viewer supports constructs critical to the hardware
portion of system-level design with minimal set-up and short learning
curve for both advanced and novice SystemC users.
Until now, abstraction levels higher than cycle accurate have been
very difficult to analyze and debug. The Vista TLM viewer solves this
problem with direct observation of the key attributes of SystemC TLM,
such as time, kernel cycles, return value, function attributes,
structure and concurrency. Vista's TLM waveform viewer expands
simulation time to display simulation cycles, enabling designers to
clearly view the event ordering that is critical to the debug of
event-based and un-timed designs (PV-Programmers view, PVT-Programmers
view + timing), as well as spike analysis. Vista efficiently handles
SystemC instance-specific breakpoints, and the waveform viewer
displays not only system-specific signals, but also any object in the
design. Every arbitrary SystemC or C++ object can be graphically
traced on the activity time line or textually observed with no
additional and intrusive coding.
"By combining the C++ language view with a hardware design view
and an understanding of SystemC semantics, Vista is a true SystemC
IDE," stated Zvika Amir, Technical Marketing Manager at Summit Design.
"While Vista is an ideal choice for the Advanced SystemC user, even
novice users will find that they can be up and running within an hour,
without any product-specific training. The tight link between Vista's
design and code browsers enable first-time SystemC users to easily
understand a SystemC design. Furthermore, the developer has access to
public domain design environments -- such as Xemacs, GDB, GCC, OSCI --
all through the single Vista IDE, and without the need for complex
integration between them."
"Established C++ IDEs provide support for only the software view
of SystemC -- but no support for hardware concepts and SystemC
semantics," said Emil Girczyc, president and CEO of Summit Design.
"Vista fills this potentially crippling gap. It provides users with
significant automation and added insight in what has historically been
a painful manual process. After using Vista, customers have told us
that they can debug in minutes cases that previously took them days.
In short, Vista cracks the debug problem."
Vista is easy to integrate with established ESL design flows. With
its unique architecture, customers can directly link their executables
into Vista with no need for complicated project setup. Customers can
choose to use their existing makefiles with Vista, or have Vista
automatically create the makefiles for the design.
Pricing and Availability
Vista 1.1, and the Vista TLM viewer, will be available in Q3 of
2005. Vista 1.0 is available now, with prices beginning at $5,000 for
a one-year time-based license. Vista is currently available on the
Linux platform.
About Summit
Summit Design's industry-leading ESL and HDL solutions enable SOC
companies to deliver products that meet system-level performance and
power targets with dramatically reduced schedule risk. Summit's
products address engineering challenges met during the specification
and implementation design phases of complex hardware/software systems.
System Architect(TM) enables massive increases in design complexity
and performance by analyzing architectural tradeoffs to arrive at
optimized system specifications. Vista(TM) and Visual Elite(TM) ensure
swift, successful design modeling and implementation in SystemC,
Verilog, and VHDL. Top electronics companies worldwide, including
leaders in the wireless, automotive, and consumer electronics space,
have achieved dramatic reductions in design cycle time through their
use of Summit's products. Summit Design is headquartered in
Burlington, Mass. with offices throughout the US, Europe, Japan,
Israel, and ROA. To learn more, please visit
http://www.summit-design.com.
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Contact:
ThinkBold Corporate Communications, LLC
Francine Bacchini, 408-839-8153
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