Success Stories

HW/SW Validation of Video Cores at Tensilica

Tensilica shares experience designing hardware video engine and H.264 software video codec using transactionbased virtual emulation platform

IP Verification at Seagate Technology

Seagate’s advanced architecture group is responsible for developing IP blocks that will be incorporated in the company’s next generation disc controller ASICs. Seagate’s architects calculated that it would take in the order of 500 CPU-years to simulate all the test cases necessary to prove out this particular design. With a six month design schedule it was clear that simulation alone would not be adequate. That’s when Seagate turned to EVE’s ZeBu for help.

Platform Processor Verification at P.A. Semi

P.A. Semi is a fabless semiconductor startup developing the ultra-low power, high performance PWRficient processor family for high-performance embedded and computing applications such as datacom and telecom, storage, entry-level servers and game consoles. Its first chip is an SoC consisting of two general purpose CPU’s, caches and IO interfaces. With a complexity of more than 20M logic gates to verify across a large suite of tests, OSes, and applications, the P.A. Semi engineering team knew that a design this sophisticated would necessitate the most advanced verification tools available, most notably hardware-assisted verification.

HW/SW Co-Verification at Renesas

The mission of our group at RDF is to develop and maintain mobile phone platform solutions from GSM to 3G and beyond. During our last project we sought to enhance our verification flow in several areas. First, we wanted real hardware behavior to be used during firmware integration. Second, we wanted visibility of internal hardware signals that FPGA prototypes do not provide. Third, we needed higher performance during software integration. Finally, we wanted our verification tools to be portable from our current project to the next one. To solve these problems we decided to use EVE’s ZeBu.

Simulation Acceleration at DiBcom

DiBcom's goal is to provide high quality mobile TV service to those traveling by car or train, at speed up to 150 miles per hour, over hundreds of miles. Our chipsets are compliant with the current worldwide Digital Video Broadcast standards DVB-T and DVB-H. We use ZeBu both day and night when processing real time video signals. The biggest advantage ZeBu gives us is the ability to detect bugs deeply embedded in the design that can be detected only by long simulation runs and processing real world signals.