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The SPIRIT Consortium Sends IP-XACT Specification to IEEE
SAN JOSE, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—June 12, 2006—
The SPIRIT Consortium, a global organization focused on
establishing multi-faceted IP/tool integration standards that drive
sustainable growth in electronic design, today announced that it is to
contribute the current version of its system-on-chip meta-data
specification, v1.2, to the IEEE for consideration as an industry
standard. This technical specification, to be known as the IP-XACT
design-exchange format, comprehensively addresses support for the
integrated multi-vendor RTL design and verification flow. The
nomenclatured P1685 IEEE-SA working group is focused on building
industry adoption and ratifying an open industry meta-data standard
for IP providers, EDA vendors, and independent design manufacturers to
help build real marketplace benefit for efficient design tool and IP
integration.
The IP-XACT specification describes a meta-data schema for the
description of intellectual property (IP) and an application
programming interface (API) to provide tool access to this schema.
This schema provides a standard method to describe IP to make it
compatible with automated integration techniques. Tools that implement
this standard will be able to automatically interpret, configure,
integrate, and manipulate IP blocks delivered with meta-data that
conforms to the proposed IP meta-data description, and the IP-XACT
APIs will provide a standard method for linking multiple tools
together through a single exchange meta-data format. This automatic
integration of tools and IP from multiple vendors creates an IP-XACT
Enabled environment. The proposed IEEE standards process will commence
work on the current IP-XACT deliverables from The SPIRIT Consortium
and will complete following a further technology contribution from The
Consortium covering transaction-level modeling extensions.
"The SPIRIT Consortium provides multi-vendor design-flow
integration requirements that help ensure efficiency and rapid
adoption of standard specifications," said Gary Delp, technical
director of The SPIRIT Consortium. "As The SPIRIT Consortium
specifications are adopted, integrated device manufacturers will
benefit from faster time-to-market and IP integration by making their
design-flows IP-XACT enabled."
The SPIRIT Consortium specifications document hardware and
software views of a design. They document the interface on an IP,
including identification of ad-hoc connections, interfaces to standard
buses, and custom buses. This allows system design and verification
tools processing the IP to automatically recognize the integration
requirements. They also document the views of the design, as well as
register and memory-map information.
About IP-XACT
IP-XACT provides support of verification IP and interfaces (e.g.,
monitors), configurability data exchange, explicit hierarchy support,
and APIs for exchange of design meta-data. Specifically, the IP-XACT
proposed standard today is comprised of the following characteristics:
-- full support of RTL design, including any component type,
hardware description language (HDL), configuration or
connection-type at this level of abstraction
-- a set of architectural rules that define constraints and guide
the connectivity and usage of each IP in a given platform
-- a set of bus definitions that describe the meaningful signal
names of each bus type so that it can be connected to
compatible IP
-- a mechanism to define any bus structure in terms of signal
names that can be used for hooking up other IP
-- a structure for describing the instantiation and connectivity
of components or component models within a design
-- methods for defining register information, memory maps and
address spaces
-- a way of separating platform-specific meta-data required for a
piece of IP that may not be part of the generic IP definition
-- a way of specifying configuration options for a piece of IP
and enabling the selection of these options
-- provides a mechanism to enable associations between
configurable elements of a design to be specified and handled
-- a way of storing persistent data that supports the iterative
process of user configurations and the options used to derive
them
-- a basic interface to enable configuration and generation
scripts
-- a mechanism for adding implementation constraints to
descriptions of IP to aid in the flow to synthesis
Extensions to the base of IP-XACT are being developed in The
SPIRIT Consortium today to address system-level design and
transactional verification. These extensions will be included in the
IP-XACT v1.4 specification to be delivered into the P1685 IEEE
standards process towards the end of 2006.
About the Consortium
The SPIRIT Consortium is a global organization focused on
establishing multi-faceted IP/tool integration standards that drive
sustainable growth in electronic design. It is comprised of companies
dedicated to the adoption of a unified set of specifications for
configuring, integrating, and verifying IP in advanced SoC design tool
sets. The Consortium is comprised of leading EDA, IP, system
integration, and semiconductor companies. For more information on The
SPIRIT Consortium and its goals, please visit
www.spiritconsortium.org.
For more information about The SPIRIT Consortium, please contact
Jayne Scheckla at 503-685-4833 or jayne_scheckla@mentor.com.
All brands or product names are the property of their respective
holders, and all other trademarks implied or not implied are
rightfully owned by the companies as registered in their country of
origin.
Contact:
The SPIRIT Consortium,
Jayne Scheckla, 503-685-4833
Email Contact
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