EVE Expands ZeBu Line with New Vertical Solutions

The addition of PCI-Express 3.0, Multiport Gigabit Ethernet, USB and HDMI transactors underscores EVE’s commitment to grow its catalog of verification intellectual property (VIP) components to support system-on-chip (SoC) verification in a broad range of markets.
“EVE has combined a wide variety of the real and virtual peripherals to giveZeBu users a way to build a flexible and scalable environment for system-level verification,” says LauroRizzatti, general manager of EVE-USA.
Also, EVE today announced ZeBu integration with the fast and flexible VSTREAM™ Virtual Debug Interface from ARM®, to link integrated development environment (IDE) and software debuggers with ARM based SOCs emulated in ZeBu. (See news release dated May 18, 2011 titled, “EVE Integrates ZeBu with ARM VSTREAM Virtual Debug Interface.”)
Virtual components from EVE’s extensive transactor catalog ease and accelerate the installation of the ZeBu emulation run-time environment. Transactor components range from PCI-Express, TLM-2, AMBA, FireWire and Ethernet to Digital Audio/Video, I2C and JTAG.
Transactors interface a high-level transactional testbenchwritten in C/C++/SystemC/SystemVerilog to a cycle-accurate design under test (DUT) mapped in ZeBu and implement a specific protocol. Designed at a high level of abstraction for fast execution speed, they are based on the ZeBu application programming interface (API) and are mapped onto the Reconfigurable Test bench (RTB), a proprietary and patented technology from EVE.
Transactors connect the ZeBu-emulated design to its system/application-level peripherals at the PHY interface, and execute at several megahertz on large designs that range from few millions application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) gates to more than a billion ASIC gates. They support realistic stimulus in a virtual environment, enabling a smooth transition from simulation to anSoC evaluation board.
The off-the-shelf ZeButransactors can be complemented by custom transactors developed via EVE’s ZEMI-3 SystemVerilogtransactor. EVE’s transactors include embedded protocol analyzers for high-level debugging and are compatible with in-circuit emulation (ICE) components and adapters.
Corner-case bugs in hardware and embedded software, such as drivers and applications, can be quickly pinpointed and corrected. SoC interoperability and software application testing can be done at this stage.
In addition to synthesized transactors, EVE’s VIP catalog encompasses synthesized memory models, hardware boards and speed-rate adapters. The Memory Model catalog includes DDRx, GDDRx, mobile DRAMs and FLASH parts, while the ICE ZeBu IP (ICE-ZIP) catalog includes PCI, USB and Audio/Video real-time interfaces.
EVE vertical solutions are used to develop and verify electronic devices such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), digital television/high-definition television (DTV/HDTV), set-top boxes, personal computers, storage and peripheral devices.
ZeBu emulation platforms combine the fastest speed of execution with the smallest footprint, and are installed in the verification flow at five of the top six semiconductor companies. They are used for SoC hardware verification and software development to shorten timetotapeout, improve product quality and eliminate costly respins, while shortening software development time ahead of silicon.
EVE will offer demonstrations of the ZeBu hardware-assisted verification family in Booth #2836, South Hall at the 48th Design Automation Conference (DAC) June 6-8 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif.