Resources

In order to properly use any Aldec software, Aldec provides customers with two types of licenses: node-locked and floating. This video will cover how to determine the license type as well as how to properly install each type of license onto a Windows machine.

Abstract: When it comes to debugging during emulation, engineers are forced to use multiple applications to ensure proper hardware signal data extraction and visualization. Learn from this webinar a leading edge technology that intelligently extracts data from the FPGA emulator to provide 100% signal visibility during emulation. This approach delivers up to 70% bandwidth savings in the critical emulator communication channel. Both dynamic and static probes from emulation can also be visualized in the Riviera-PRO waveform viewer preserving the original signal names and hierarchy paths and providing complete traceability to the design’s RTL source code. Play webinar   

本論文では、最新のVirtex-7デバイスおよびVirtex-7 2000Tを２つ搭載したAldec HES-7プロトタイピング・ボードに注目し、FPGAベースのプロトタイピングを使用したASIC検証の可能性について説明しています。また、最も一般的なパーティショニングの問題と解決策について記載されています。

Comprehensive verification that can be provided by HDL simulators is good, but not ideal. What is necessary is a faster, safer, and more thorough verification environment that combines the robustness of an HDL simulator with the speed of FPGA prototyping boards. The goal is to put together the power of these two verification methodologies into one platform.

Functional verification of a design at the three design stages (RTL, Gate-Level and Post-Route) are essential steps to ensure correct behavior of a design according to requirements, however they are limited by HDL simulator speed. While HDL simulators offer advanced debugging capabilities and provide robust design coverage information, their speed is the primary bottleneck of the design cycle when it comes to verification. This webinar will discuss a faster, safer, and more thorough verification environment that combines the robustness of an HDL simulator with the speed of FPGA prototyping boards. Play webinar   

Software costs now dominate in SoC design. It is therefore imperative that the dependencies the hardware places on the software are captured and managed as early as possible. To ignore these is to risk project and budget overrun. In this webinar, we will illustrate why FPGAs are chosen as the verification platform for software integration. We will discuss the challenges of using FPGAs for verification and introduce the use of hybrid virtual prototypes. A comparison will be made between traditional FPGA ASIC prototypes and an FPGA-based emulation system. Play webinar   

In this video, Application Engineer Henry Chan, explains how emulation can help accelerate UVM-based testbenches and explores the benefits of emulation/acceleration over traditional simulation tools. A cursory overview of the Accellera SCE-MI standard as well as some necessary testbench modifications for emulation/acceleration are presented. A case-study using a UVM testbench and Network-on-Chip design is examined to demonstrate the benefits of emulation.

Whether it is an ASIC, ASSP or large FPGA design, emulation and prototyping are indispensable verification and validation activities. Often FPGA based platforms are chosen due to their scalability and versatility and more importantly, because of their runtime speed potential. What drives many away from this platform are the challenges of the multi-FPGA design setup that requires complex partitioning, arranging interconnections and managing multiple clock domains across multiple devices. Automation in this field is highly desirable to avoid time consuming and error prone hand-crafting and design hacks that would enable FPGA prototyping. Aldec HES™ Prototyping Platform and related solutions are here to mitigate these risks and facilitate rapid implementation of reliable FPGA prototypes. Design setup for a large multi-FPGA platform is facilitated with the HES-DVM tool that provides new partitioning utilities and can convert ASIC clocks to FPGA-proof structures. Awareness of clock domains and prototyping board connectivity resources facilitates in making wise decisions and allows achieving high clock ratios of FPGA prototypes. In this webinar, we will demonstrate the new HES-DVM prototyping flow that will increase your productivity in physical prototyping by shortening the setup time and increasing runtime speed of your design in FPGA.  Play webinar   

Abstract: Debugging a design during emulation with a high level of visibility can be a challenge. This paper presents Aldec’s solution to this problem; a debugging environment for SCE-MI co-emulation that provides 100% signal visibility of the design running in an FPGA-based emulator. Debug probes captured intelligently from emulator retain original signals names and hierarchy paths to provide true RTL view of design in emulation.

Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) is one of the most popular approaches in using transactional testbench environment. The growth of SoC designs forces design and verification teams to use emulation as a way to speed-up verification process. Standard CoEmulation Modeling Interface (SCE-MI) provides ways to connect emulated design with transactional testbench. This paper describes how to use SCE-MI to create UVM test environment that is ready for both simulation and emulation.

Abstract:
Aldec industry partner, ReneLife introduces its proprietary core technology, ReneGENE, for fast and accurate alignment of short reads obtained from the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) pipeline. The technology, devoid of heuristics can precisely align the DNA reads against a reference genome at a single nucleotide resolution. As genomics permeates the entire landscape of biology, including biomedicine and therapeutics, ReneGENE creates a genomic highway that significantly contributes to reduce the time from sample to information without compromising on accuracy, critical for lifesaving medicare applications, biotechnology product development and forensics.

In this webinar, we present AccuRA, a high-performance reconfigurable FPGA accelerator engine for ReneGENE, offered on Aldec HES-HPC™ for accurate, and ultra-fast big data mapping and alignment of DNA short-reads from the NGS platforms. AccuRA demonstrates a speedup of over ~ 1500+ x compared to standard heuristic aligners in the market like BFAST which was run on a 8-core 3.5 GHz AMD FX™ processor with a system memory of 16 GB. AccuRA employs a scalable and massively parallel computing and data pipeline, which achieves short read mapping in minimum deterministic time. It offers full alignment coverage of the genome (million to billion bases long), including repeat regions and multi-read alignments. AccuRA offers a need-based affordable solution, deployable both in the cloud and local platforms. AccuRA scales well on the Aldec platform, at multiple levels of design granularity.

Agenda:

• Introducing the world of genomic big data computing
• The need for accuracy and precision
• Introducing ReneGENE/AccuRA
• Product Demo
• Impact of ReneGENE-The Genomic Highway

Presenter: Santhi Natarajan, Ph. D (IISc) Play webinar   

The FPGA design architecture is the single most important and primary factor in achieving development efficiency, quality and reliability. The difference between a good and a bad design architecture can be about 50% of the workload and a high degree of detected and undetected bugs. Most design architectures can be improved and optimized to increase both quality and efficiency. The FPGA design architecture also affects several project and product characteristics such as reusability, power consumption, resource usage, timing closure, clocking issues, implementation clarity, review easiness and verification/test workload.  Play webinar   

For most FPGA projects, over 50% of the overall project time is spent on verification. This time can be significantly reduced if the verification architecture is well-structured and developed with a focus on reuse. In this webinar, we will show you how to make a simple, well-structured, and efficient testbench using the open-source Universal VHDL Verification Methodology (UVVM) architecture. We will also discuss the importance of testbench sequencer simplicity and how it can be used to control multiple VHDL Verification Components simultaneously. Play webinar   

Randomization is very important for modern verification. Still, very few designers apply randomization sufficiently in their testbenches. This means they are missing out on a very important method for finding potential bugs in their design, and as a result their products have significantly more undetected bugs. Randomization can be used in many ways, but it is of course also important to know when not to use it. This presentation will show several levels of applying randomization, both with respect to the actual DUT and the randomization functionality available. The main principles shown are tool independent, but the new UVVM randomization functionality will be used as examples, thus also giving you a kick start using this great tool. Play webinar   

Functional coverage is often mentioned together with constrained-random verification, and this is a great combination. However, functional coverage is also very useful even if you have no randomization at all. This is a great method for ensuring that you are in fact checking the right things in your testbench. Unfortunately, not many designers are applying functional coverage, and maybe part of the reason for that is the complexity surrounding previous solutions to this functionality. This presentation will show you how it works and how easy it is to get started with this new functionality in UVVM. The presentation will also explain and show the usage of Specification Coverage aka Requirement Coverage, which is a feature to track that all your specification requirements have been covered. Many of us are already familiar with Code Coverage since it’s very easy to use, but some important issues will be presented. Play webinar   

As today's SoC and ASIC designs evolve to integrate the latest embedded processors, media interfaces, and high-speed serial communication, FPGA prototyping platforms are struggling to maintain the pace of designs surpassing the 100 million ASIC gate count. With the evolution of modular architectures and robust scalable backplanes, FPGA prototyping vendor solutions such as Aldec HES-7™ are able to keep pace with hardware designers. The HES-7 backplane enables scaling up to 96M ASIC gates, which can be serially daisy-chained for designs which require additional capacity. Play webinar   

Most ASIC IP and SoC platforms will be validated at some point using FPGAs; this task is typically referred to as ASIC FPGA prototyping. At the same time, FPGAs are increasingly being used for verification due to the performance and scalability of these systems. In this webinar we will introduce an approach where UVM tests can be accelerated with the use of an FPGA co-emulator. The approach is built upon industry standards SystemVerilog and SCE-MI, and requires no changes to the test environment to accelerate. This enables tests to be moved seamlessly from simulation to the accelerator and back again. Play webinar   

Mission-critical FPGA designs for space and radar applications continue to increase in complexity, such that they require a comprehensive and robust verification environment. There are hardware-in-the-loop solutions in the market that utilize FPGA boards, but when it comes to establishing functional coverage and debugging the custom logic, users would typically need to go back to HDL simulation. As a result, HDL simulations are becoming excessive and they have become the primary bottleneck when it comes to verification. In this paper we will describe a solution that can accelerate HDL simulation for the system FPGA design that includes the custom logic and reused IP Cores where the testbench executes in the simulator and the synthesizable parts of the design is implemented in a Microchip FPGA board.

このドキュメントでは、Aldec AMIの設定と起動に関する重要な情報、およびAldec HES-DVM Proto CEとBoard Compilerの使用方法を説明しています。