CoWare and STMicroelectronics Create Advanced ESL Design Automation Environment for ST's Next Generation Custom Processors

STMicroelectronics selected CoWare as a partner for this project because of its excellent experience with CoWare Processor Designer tools. These tools have given STMicroelectronics an unrivaled boost in productivity that has resulted in faster time-to-market for the company because they significantly cut tool development and verification time. CoWare CORXpert for STMicroelectronics custom processors supports ST's engineers in the creation of their application-specific custom processors because instruction- and cycle-accurate models, as well as RTL, can be easily generated directly from C-code. This cuts down on possible errors that can be incurred in this process when it is done manually.

This process is handled securely by the CORXpert software and frees up the engineers so that they can concentrate on optimizing cores rather than being trapped in the manual operation that was previously required, said Philippe Galliard, Software Tools Development Manager, Software Tools and Services Division, STMicroelectronics. By taking advantage of the shorter development cycles, ST engineers can target the entire application range, from dedicated controls to complex applications in the multi-media domain, with cost, performance, and power optimized custom processors.

The CoWare CORXpert for STMicroelectronics customer processors solution demonstrates the maturity, flexibility, and openness of the CoWare Processor Designer tools, said Dr. Andrea Kroll, marketing director, CoWare. It is these capabilities that allowed CoWare to integrate this customized solution into an existing ST design flow.