Hardware and software engineers designing SoC FPGAs stand to profit from Aldec QEMU Bridge

Aldec supports an integrated co-simulation environment with virtual processor emulator

 

Henderson, NV – November 15^th, 2017 – Aldec, Inc., an industry leader in Electronic Design Verification, has added QEMU Bridge to the latest release of Riviera-PRO™, the company’s advanced verification platform, to enable hardware/software co-simulation of designs intended to run on SoC FPGAs.

 

Integration and simulation of FPGA custom IPs with software applications and drivers executing on the virtual processor in QEMU is now possible and simplified. The QEMU Bridge converts SystemC TLM transactions to AXI and vice versa providing a fast interface for co-simulation.

 

“System integration is becoming increasingly challenging in light of growing design sizes and device complexity,” Radek Nawrot, Software Product Manager. “The co-simulation activities facilitated through QEMU Bridge enables hardware and software engineers to work together to locate, identify, and retire bugs at an earlier stage in the development cycle, thus saving both development time and costs.”

 

Hardware engineers (using Riviera-PRO) can set break points in the HDL, examine data flow, and even analyze the code coverage and paths that are exercised by the software application running in QEMU. Software engineers (using QEMU) can use GNU Debugger (GDB) to instrument both the kernel and the driver to step through the code using breakpoints.

 

For a demonstration video of the solution, go to HDL and Software Co-Simulation with QEMU and Riviera-PRO.

 

Also new to Riviera-PRO 2017.10:

• Significantly improved performance when using code containing many inline randomized calls
• Simulation speed of UVM design is up to 29% faster
• VHPI design simulation speedup
• Direct interface with ALINT-PRO™ Design Rule Checking tool
• Mixed-Signal Silvaco® SmartSpice™ Interface (initial stage)
• Pre-compiled Aldec AXI BFM 1.7
• Histogram can now be created in the Plot window

 

For additional information, tutorials, Overview Presentation and What’s New, and free evaluation downloads, visit http://www.aldec.com/Products/Riviera-PRO.

 

About Riviera-PRO

Riviera-PRO™ addresses verification needs of engineers crafting tomorrow’s cutting-edge FPGA and SoC devices. Riviera-PRO enables the ultimate testbench productivity, reusability, and automation by combining the high-performance simulation engine, advanced debugging capabilities at different levels of abstraction, and support for the latest Language and Verification Library Standards.

 

About Aldec

Established in 1984, Aldec is an industry leader in Electronic Design Verification and offers a patented technology suite including: RTL Design, RTL Simulators, Hardware-Assisted Verification, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, Design Rule Checking, IP Cores, Requirements Lifecycle Management, DO-254 Functional Verification, Embedded Solutions and Military/Aerospace solutions. www.aldec.com