Design methodologies speed time to ARC silicon

Synopsys Professional Services has assisted ARC International with two strategic projects that enable ARC and its customers to integrate ARCtangent microprocessor cores more quickly and reliably.

Synopsys Professional Services has assisted ARC International with two strategic projects that enable ARC and its customers to integrate ARCtangent microprocessor cores more quickly and reliably into SoCs at geometries of 0.13um and below.

In addition, ARC has now joined other premier intellectual property (IP) providers as a member of the Synopsys Professional Services Alliance Programme.

The Alliance Programme offers developers of complex ICs a comprehensive set of design services leveraging design solutions from best-in-class technology vendors, enabling customers to gain access to complete product development solutions that shorten product development time.

In the first project with ARC, an integration flow from RTL to placed gates was established, providing a faster and more predictable route for implementing designs utilising ARC's configurable processor cores on various silicon technologies.

In the second project, Synopsys design consultants helped develop a Vera and C-based verification environment for ARC's configurable processors and its peripherals.

This environment is used by ARC for internal validation of their cores, as well as by the company's customers to ensure correct integration of ARC IP into their SoC designs.

"Enabling quick SoC integration and addressing the challenges of deep sub-micron technologies is becoming mandatory with soft IP deployment, and with the new flow developed in co-operation with Synopsys we were able to meet aggressive integration goals", said Mike Gulett, President and CEO of ARC International.

"Synopsys Professional Services has great breadth and depth of understanding of how SoCs are designed and verified today, including considerable experience with the smallest process geometries and complex verification environments.

We selected a partner that would not only fulfil our requirements, but who could also provide high-end SoC design services to our customers.

Synopsys Professional Services fits the bill perfectly".

The integration flow, which includes synthesis, design-for-test, static-timing analysis, formal verification, power optimisation and core floorplanning, provides ARC's OEM customers with a predictable route to silicon, while allowing them to effectively use the configurability and extensibility of the ARCtangent core.

Synopsys helped create and validate the design flow with multiple ARCtangent core configurations and alternative integration approaches, including logical synthesis and physical synthesis using the DesignWare IP Library.

The physical synthesis approach allows SoC designers to use either a default core floorplan created by Synopsys, or to use Physical Compiler'sT RTL-performance prototyping to enable designs to be implemented without a pre-existing floorplan of the core.

The Vera-based verification environment integrates with ARC's instruction set simulator and includes a generator of random, legal instruction streams to verify the multi-directional flow of data through the ARCtangent microprocessor core and peripherals.

The environment uses advanced verification techniques and includes a self-checking mechanism to automatically ensure correct functional operation of the ARC subsystem, both stand-alone and when integrated into an SoC.

Execution efficiency was maximised during the verification project through close collaboration between the two teams.

Synopsys' staff worked alongside ARC's engineers at multiple international sites.

The collaboration leveraged the complementary strengths of the two companies.

Synopsys' experience in implementing advanced SoC designs using the latest methodologies, and ARC's processor design expertise and understanding of end-user requirements.

The agreement between ARC and Synopsys Professional Services is based on enabling the integration flow and verification flow for mutual customers.

"Proven design flows that have been optimised to implement and verify 0.13 micron designs are not off-the-shelf commodities", said Roderick Urquhart, European Director of Consulting Design Services at Synopsys Professional Services.

"The collaboration with ARC was successful not only in satisfying ARC as our customer, but in recognising the additional value these projects bring to our mutual customers.

With ARC as the newest member of our Alliance Program, the new integration flow and verification environment we established together can be leveraged by ARC licensees for a faster and more predictable SoC design process".

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