Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: CoWare | Subject: Processor Designer
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 06 February 2007
Software supports VLIW processor design
Designers explore large design space to ensure that targeted processing power is achieved and the interconnect infrastructure is available to feed data into the processor at an acceptable rate.
A new release of CoWare Processor Designer provides increased support for next-generation very long instruction word (VLIW) processors The new CoWare Processor Designer enables users to explore a large design space to ensure that the targeted processing power is achieved and the interconnect infrastructure is available to feed data into the processor at an acceptable rate
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 11 Mar 2003 at 8.00am (UK)
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Now, with CoWare Processor Designer, it can be done in a matter of hours.
VLIW architectures have proven to be an optimal target for today's C compiler technology.
VLIW architectures do not require designs to sacrifice software development productivity for the very high-performance processing needed for the next-generation high-end video, multimedia and wireless devices.
Companies developing high-end video processing devices that implement the next generation H.264 or VC1 video standards and companies developing wireless baseband processing devices targeting the next generation WiMAX or LTE (next-generation W-CDMA) wireless standards can benefit the most from the new capabilities in Processor Designer.
With the software programmability available through the Processor Designer flow, users can make adjustments for late changes in the standards and provide devices that can be programmed for different standards.
This can be done while maintaining the performance of custom hardware.
If redundant parallel data paths are included, they make the design too expensive.
Very specific customisation of every application is required to be cost effective.
The new enhancements to the Lisa language, which are now available through CoWare Processor Designer, enable users to parameterise the processor architecture with the number of parallel data paths (VLIW slots) to determine the optimal number of slots for a specific application and then customise each slot individually.
The new Processor Designer fully automates the exploration of the number of parallel data paths by generating software development tools such as assembler, linker, simulator, and a highly-optimising C complier for software performance measurement, as well as RTL code generation for hardware cost estimation.
The result is that the user can script the exploration of various architectures with different datapaths in a matter of hours rather than months.
"A start-up company still in 'stealth' mode made use of the new VLIW support in CoWare Processor Designer to model its new processor architecture", said Dr Andrea Kroll, Product Marketing Director, CoWare.
"According to the company's CEO, Processor Designer enabled his team to demonstrate its new architecture to investors and new customers early, before the silicon was available, specifically because the modelling could be done very quickly".
Added Kroll: "Similarly, CoWare Processor Designer tools enabled a large US-based semiconductor company to provide its customers with early access to its next-generation architecture".
"This gave the company a unique 'go-to-market' advantage because its customers could provide very early feedback".
Continued Kroll: "CoWare Processor Designer is unique because it can generate, from one specification, all the software development tools and the RTL for processor architects, software developers and hardware designers".
"Other tools require multiple, independent specifications to generate the individual solutions that might not be consistent".
"With CoWare's one specification approach, there is a real time savings for the user".
New features in the most recent release of Processor Designer contribute to the overall benefit of faster architecture exploration.
Full C compiler support for the new VLIW language extensions enable quick exploration on the number of parallel instructions suitable for a specific application or application space.
Efficient RTL generation from one specification enables quick cost analysis of the VLIW architecture.
And the unified debugging environment for stand-alone and system-level debugging enables advanced debugging for the software application jointly with the processor and the platform hardware, which improves processor design and software development productivity.
The new CoWare Processor Designer is available now from CoWare.
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