Carbon Design Systems Launches IP Web Portal to Streamline Access to Virtual Platform Building Blocks

The portal, used with Carbon SoC Designer Plus and SystemC-based platforms, eliminates the virtual platform assembly bottleneck by offering models for the majority of third-party IP content used in advanced SoC designs.

“The bottleneck in creating virtual platforms for system-level use has always been model availability,” states Rick Lucier, chief executive officer (CEO) of Carbon Design Systems. “Carbon IP Exchange eliminates this bottleneck by reducing the time it takes to create virtual platforms for customers from months to days. The combination of Carbon IP Exchange, Carbon Model Studio and SoC Designer Plus gives designers a powerful toolset to efficiently assemble a platform.”

Simplified Model Configuration and Management
Models, previously available by compiling register transfer level (RTL) code with Carbon Model Studio, can be securely configured, compiled and managed using Carbon IP Exchange. They can be downloaded through the web portal and are used with Carbon SoC Designer Plus or any SystemC-based virtual environment. Models can be shared within a design team or company to further streamline the model management process.
Once created, models can be downloaded from the portal at any time and are retained there to ensure immediate access to any pre-built model. For specific IP, Carbon Model Studio is provided to automatically generate a system model.

Carbon IP Exchange currently has models from ARM, Cadence Design Systems, Elliptic Technologies, MIPS Technologies, Tensilica, VeriSilicon and Vivante Corporation. They are available at a variety of abstraction levels, ranging from functional to 100% cycle accurate. Cycle-accurate models can be configured through a series of questions to set up the needed options, and adapt as they are answered. This ensures that only valid models are built and reduces the amount of design knowledge required.
Users are automatically notified when models are revised or updated. Availability of additional models will be announced in the coming months.

Support for Carbon IP Exchange
Various IP vendors are participating in the Carbon IP Exchange business model and applaud Carbon’s efforts, including ARM. “Carbon IP Exchange provides 24/7 access to cycle accurate and programmers view models for our processors, peripherals and fabric,” remarks John Cornish general manager and executive vice present of ARM’s Systems Design Division. “The combination of Carbonized models together with ARM Fast Models enables our customers to have 100% accurate models as well as models that operate at several hundred million instructions per second.”

”Memory controllers play a vital role in the system throughput of any advanced SoC,” says Michał Siwiński, group director of System & SoC Realization product management at Cadence. “By making accurate models of our DDR controllers available on Carbon IP Exchange, we are enabling our customers to make critical performance tradeoffs early in the design cycle, accelerating predictable System Realization.”

“Security processors play a vital role in many leading SoC applications,” maintains Rick White, Elliptic Technologies’ CEO. “Carbon IP Exchange enables us to market and distribute models of our security IP to a broader range of customers for evaluation and early firmware development.”

Art Swift, vice president of marketing and business development at MIPS Technologies, Inc., agrees. “As the MIPS® architecture continues to proliferate in our traditional markets and into emerging markets such as mobile handsets, the cycle accurate models of our processors available through the Carbon IP Exchange can enable our customers to make architectural tradeoffs, develop firmware and quickly realize the value that MIPS processors can add to their SoC designs.”

“Tensilica demonstrates its commitment to ESL design by offering the widest range of modeling options among providers of processor IP,” adds Steve Roddy, vice president of marketing and business development at Tensilica. “By making 100% accurate models of our bridge components available on Carbon IP Exchange, we are giving our customers the ability to make accurate decisions even earlier in the design cycle.”
“By making our ZSP core models available to our customers using Carbon IP Exchange, we are enabling virtual prototyping of ZSP-based SoC platforms for pre-RTL software development and early system analysis and architecture exploration,” reveals Prasad Kalluri, corporate vice president of engineering at VeriSilicon.

Wei-Jin Dai, CEO and president at Vivante, concurs: “Vivante’s GC Series GPU technology is powering the next generation of both ultra-high performance and cost-driven SoCs powering upcoming mobile phones/tablets, home entertainment and other mass market consumer electronic products. Carbon models are enabling many of Vivante’s licensees to model their SoC systems. We are delighted to partner with Carbon to serve the requirements of our mutual customers for system modeling.”