Agreement signed to accelerate early software development

Mentor will have access to all ARM Fast Models for the ARMv7 and ARMv8 architectures across all ARM Cortex-A, Cortex-R, Cortex-M cores, GPUs and System IP, in addition to engineering collaboration on further optimisations. This builds on agreements already in place to ensure that the validation of ARM models is completed ahead of mutual customer demand.

“Our collaboration with Mentor has resulted in one of ARM’s broadest modeling partnerships,” said Javier Orensanz, General Manager, Development Solutions Group, ARM. “With this agreement, our mutual customers can utilise ARM’s entire model portfolio to speed system execution and debug issues with complete accuracy.”

As a result of this agreement, ARM Fast Models can be combined with the Veloce emulation platform, for example, to enable faster verification and earlier software development. Moving the modeling of the CPU and GPU out of the emulator and into the ARM Fast Models allows software execution performance orders of magnitude faster than a traditional approach that relies on a complete RTL description to be ready. This enables software tasks to be executed quickly, such as Android boots and application execution. Verification teams can now validate more than just boot code and drivers. They can also run complete software stacks to exercise the system in a realistic manner and flush out hard-to-find bugs, which would otherwise have gone undetected until physical prototypes were available.

“This second agreement with ARM clearly indicates our strategic alignment toward providing a complete HW/SW development platform,” said Brian Derrick, Vice President of Marketing, Mentor Graphics. “Our mutual customers benefit from early access and validation of Mentor technology working with the most current ARM models.”