ESL 2.0 Technology Release for the Design of Processor- and Software-Intensive Electronic Platforms

The need for ESL 2.0 has been created by the breakdown of old design methods and the emergence of new design challenges led by the need to design better products faster using multi-core designs. It also aims at breaking the isolation of each design/development team and enables enterprises to get better designed-into customer products sooner. Virtual hardware platforms are at the core of ESL 2.0, which is characterized by the combination of the following.

· The application of ESL technologies and methodologies to a larger community of users including architect and hardware development teams (at the origin of ESL), and now extended to software development, system integration, and test teams.
· The rapid rollout and use of these technologies and methodologies in a production environment.
· The use of virtual hardware platforms by the larger enterprise and its ecosystem through marketing and business development functions.

“A number of key trends within embedded systems engineering are driving growth in the ESL market including the increasing complexity of hardware platforms, the growing importance of software development, the anticipated increase in the use of virtual system prototyping, and the challenges associated with effective system architecture specification that currently represent one of the leading causes of schedule delay, said Matt Volckmann, Senior Analyst/Program Manager with Venture Development Corporation. The continued maturity of ESL tools in combination with improving industry standards and the greater availability of required third-party IP elements at higher levels of abstraction will provide future opportunity for solution providers and help facilitate greater adoption of ESL methodologies.”

“Due to the rapid convergence of multicore designs, our customers are expanding the use of ESL technologies and methodologies into a production environment and to a wider set of users, including at their customers,” said Alan Naumann, president and CEO, CoWare. “This means they need ESL technology that works for them rather than them having to make it work. CoWare is the only company that has developed a comprehensive ESL solution with this in mind. Welcome to ESL 2.0.”

“Using CoWare ESL technologies, we were able to increase by 30% the performance of our production networking SoC while reducing our time to market by more than 55%,” said Mitsuhiro Kurata, Director LSI Development Department, Semiconductor Division, YAMAHA Corporation. “We are excited about the new CoWare release capabilities. It will make it even easier to deploy ESL technologies to other production design teams.”

CoWare is the first company to deliver a comprehensive and integrated offering for the ESL 2.0 era. The release supports the larger ESL 2.0 community with new features and benefits through a set of six solutions: Platform Architecture Design, Software Development, Platform Verification, Application Sub-System Design, Processor Design, and DSP Algorithm Design.