Accelerating verification and reducing the risks of SoC design

Mentor Emulation Services brings the Veloce emulation platform to companies with an immediate need, who choose to purchase at a later time, or who own the Veloce platform and need additional short term capacity.

International automotive supplier Continental used Mentor Emulation Services for the verification of a complex SoC that achieved first pass success, on schedule. “Getting first pass success was an extraordinary achievement for a design of the size and complexity we were verifying,” said Theodor Maier, Director of Microelectronic Integration, Corporate Systems & Technology at Continental. “In our case, the decision to forego FPGA prototyping came very late in the project phase when we only had three to five months before tapeout. Mentor Emulation Services helped us to reduce the risk in this very big challenge, giving us the confidence to go to tapeout on schedule.”

As SoCs become increasingly more complex, the need for hardware emulation in an overall verification strategy is no longer a ‘nice to have,’ but rather a ‘must have.’ The Veloce platform gives verification engineers the speed to run millions of cycles on their designs, as well as a portfolio of applications to verify various design objectives. Some companies have not yet invested in the Veloce platform, but recognise that adding emulation to the verification flow is a competitive strategy. There are also companies who own a Veloce platform but need additional capacity to satisfy spikes in verification activity. These scenarios are satisfied by making the Veloce platform more available through Mentor Emulation Services.

Mentor Emulation Services offers access to the Veloce emulation platform either through limited time installation at a customer site, or remote access to a data centre located emulator. To make sure customers achieve their objectives, Mentor Emulation Services also includes verification specialists and the IP needed to accelerate ‘bring-up’ of the design and set-up of the emulation environment. The combination of access, expertise and IP dramatically reduces the time and effort needed for customers to wield the full suite of Veloce Apps, including accelerated hardware debug, HW/SW co-verification, low-power verification, and more.

“The Veloce emulation platform has the technical sophistication to execute over a range of emulation usage scenarios,” said Paul Hofstadler, Vice President of Consulting, Mentor Graphics. “That’s how, combined with proven IP and dedicated emulation expertise over the life of the project, the Mentor Emulation Services opens the door to any company that needs to fully realise the benefits of verifying hardware and software on a Veloce platform.”