First sighting of Cadence’s virtual prototype

Brian Bailey

October 26, 2011

Brian Bailey

Earlier this year Cadence had announced two additions to their verification lineup. One was an FPGA prototype and the other was a virtual prototyping capability in the making that was to be launched later in the year. Well, here it is – initially targeted at the Xilinx Zynq platform. This complements the announcement a few weeks ago about Altera and Synopsys teaming for a similar capability, and with Intel buying CoFluent for similar purposes.

Here is the announcement:

Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ: XLNX) and Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS) today announced that they have teamed to develop the industry’s first virtual platform to enable system design, software development, and testing of Xilinx Zynq™-7000 Extensible Processing Platform (EPP) based systems in advance of hardware availability. This solution further enhances the development environment being put into place for Xilinx’s ARM® processor-based processing platform and changes the development flow for embedded designers, enabling software content to drive hardware design. ARM TechCon attendees can see a demonstration of this extensible virtual platform at Xilinx booth #207.

“Since 2008, Xilinx has been building a comprehensive development offering for the Zynq-7000 EPP that includes hardware emulation and early access to software, giving many customers the opportunity to have their systems up and running already,” said Lawrence Getman, Vice President of Processing Platforms at Xilinx., vice president, Processing Platforms at Xilinx. “The Cadence/Xilinx solution takes embedded software development to a whole new level by mapping it to the Zynq-7000 family’s unique extensibility without the need for any hardware other than the designers’ workstation.”

Built upon Cadence® Virtual System Platform (VSP) technology, part of the Cadence System Development Suite, the virtual platform provides a stable, feature-rich, fast and functionally accurate model of the Zynq-7000 EPP processor system, its peripherals, memory and I/O, capable of booting Linux and other operating systems. Complementing this model, and mirroring the programmable capabilities of the EPP hardware, is the ability for developers to extend the virtual platform using transaction-level models (TLM) to support custom devices that will ultimately be instantiated within the Zynq-7000 device’s programmable logic.

“This new extensible virtual platform increases productivity for concurrent development of system architecture, hardware and software,” said Michał Siwiński, group director of product marketing, System & Software Realization Group, Cadence. “As software content continues to grow, software-driven, system-level development methodologies are critical to the success of embedded systems– a concept detailed in the EDA360 vision.”

 The Virtual Platform augments the overall development offering Xilinx has been providing to early access Zynq-7000 EPP customers by enhancing the capabilities for software developers to start designing their applications today. Xilinx has been working with members of its Alliance Program and ARM’s Connected Community over the course of two years to build a comprehensive development offering for the Zynq-7000 EPP. The ecosystem of vendors providing tools and operating system support for the Zynq-7000 devices continues to grow as part of a program that began with the availability of FPGA based emulation platforms and a hardware tools early access program. Today, Xilinx also announced an Open Source Linux offering. To learn more, visit www.xilinx.com/products/zynq-7000/linux.htm.

An early access program for the virtual platform is in place and general availability is planned for Q1, 2012. Visit www.xilinx.com/Zynq to learn more about this virtual platform and the Zynq-7000 device family. Visit www.cadence.com/zynq to learn more about the Cadence’s Virtual System Platform and the Cadence-Xilinx collaboration on the virtual platform.

About the Zynq-7000 EPP
The Zynq-7000 family is Xilinx's first Extensible Processing Platform (EPP). This new class of product combines an industry-standard ARM dual-core Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ processing system with Xilinx 28nm unified programmable logic architecture. This processor-centric architecture offers the flexibility and scalability of an FPGA combined with ASIC-like performance and power and the ease of use of an ASSP. The extensible Virtual Platform Early Access program has begun and will open to a broader customer base by the end of this year.

Brian Bailey – keeping you covered

---

If you found this article to be of interest, visit EDA Designline where you will find the latest and greatest design, technology, product, and news articles with regard to all aspects of Electronic Design Automation (EDA).

Also, you can obtain a highlights update delivered directly to your inbox by signing up for the EDA Designline weekly newsletter – just Click Here to request this newsletter using the Manage Newsletters tab (if you aren't already a member you'll be asked to register, but it's free and painless so don't let that stop you [grin]).