Mentor Graphics Corporation

Virtual Machine Works, Inc.

Other

Ikos Systems, Inc.

Siemens Industry Software Gmbh

Charles W Selvidge

Sanjay Gupta

Krishnamurthy Suresh

Matthew L Dahl

Praveen Shukla

Muralidhar R Kudlugi

Satish Kumar Agarwal

Saurabh Gupta

Anant Agarwal

Peer Schmitt

Suresh Krishnamurthy

Deepak Kumar Garg

Philippe Diehl

Gregoire Brunot

Kenneth W Crouch

John R Stickley

Saurabh Khaitan

Russell Elias Vreeland, Iii

Ronald James Squiers

Mark E Seneski

Amit Jain

Kenneth Crouch

Amit Gupta

Kem Stewart

Marina Wong

Johnathan Babb

Laurent Vuillemin

Jonathan William Babb

Jean-Marc Brault

Vipul Kulshrestha

Joshua Marantz

Cyril Quennesson

Jean-Paul Clavequin

Mukesh Kumar Gupta

Soha M N Hassoun

Sudhanshu Jayaswal

Abhijit Das

Ansuman Prusty

Frédéric Reblewski

David C Scott

Anant Argarwal

Michael Donald Noakes

Debdutta Bhattacharya

Ayub Akbar Khan

Jeffrey Evans

Each reconfigurable hardware modeling circuit of a plurality of reconfigurable hardware modeling circuits in a reconfigurable hardware modeling device comprises: a model computation subsystem configurable either to model elements of a circuit design, or to serve as a testbench element, or both, and a network subsystem comprising: network circuitry and signal reduction circuitry, the signal reduction circuitry configurable to perform a signal reduction function, the signal reduction function combining a plurality of status signals into a single status signal, the plurality of status signals comprising status signals received from one or more reconfigurable hardware modeling circuits in the plurality of reconfigurable hardware modeling circuits. Alternatively or additionally, each network circuit of a plurality of network circuits in the reconfigurable hardware modeling device may comprise signal reduction circuitry configurable to perform the signal reduction function.

Reduce/broadcast computation-enabled switching elements in an emulation network

Aspects of the disclosed technology relate to techniques of bandwidth test in networking system-on-chip design verification. A hardware model of interface circuitry implemented in a reconfigurable hardware modeling device associates dispatch time information with messages when the messages are dispatched by a hardware model of a circuit design implemented in the reconfigurable hardware modeling device. The dispatch time information of a particular message includes information about when, based on a model time reference provided in the reconfigurable hardware modeling device, the particular message is dispatched by the hardware model of the circuit design. The messages and the dispatch time information are sent to a traffic analysis device, which determines bandwidth information of ports of the circuit design based on the dispatch time information.

Bandwidth test in networking System-on-Chip verification

A verification system comprises: a reconfigurable hardware modeling device programmed to implement a hardware model of a circuit design; a first computing unit configured to execute a first software program; and a second computing unit configured to execute a testbench model of a second software program. The execution of the first software program and the testbench model of the second software program generates first stimuli and second stimuli for an operation of the hardware model of the circuit design, respectively. The first stimuli and the second stimuli are transmitted to the hardware model of the circuit design through a communication interface.

Concurrent testbench and software driven verification

Aspects of the disclosed technology relate to techniques of latency test in networking system-on-chip design verification. A hardware model of interface circuitry implemented in a reconfigurable hardware modeling device associates arrival time information with messages when the messages are delivered to a hardware model of a circuit design implemented in the reconfigurable hardware modeling device, and associates latency information with the messages when the messages are dispatched by the hardware model of the circuit design. The arrival time information of a particular message and the latency information are determined with respect to a model time reference provided in the reconfigurable hardware modeling device.

Latency test in networking system-on-chip verification

Various aspects of the present disclosed technology relate to techniques for selective conditional stall for speeding up hardware-based circuit verification. A path-breaking circuit device is inserted into a location of a design path configured to generate a stall signal indicating whether a change of signal between a pair of neighboring clock cycles of a clock signal is detected at the location. The stall signal is used to directly or indirectly suppress, when the change of signal between the pair of neighboring clock cycles is detected, the next state updating for state element models in the hardware model of circuit design. The design path is usually the critical design path. The insertion location is usually selected to be a location where the signal does not change frequently.

Selective conditional stall for hardware-based circuit design verification

An emulation process is performed with an emulator coupled to one or more targets. During a part or a whole of the emulation process, input signals to the emulator from the one or more targets are being captured, streamed out of the emulator and stored in one or more processor-readable media. The part or the whole of the emulation process is then repeated with the emulator decoupled to the one or more targets. During the repeating, the input signals stored in the one or more processor-readable media are being streamed back to the emulator. The streaming in both of the capture and replay modes may be through interfaces designed for small packets of data and fast streaming speed.

Target capture and replay in emulation

Aspects of the disclosed technology relate to techniques for modeling content-addressable memory in emulation and prototyping. A model for content-addressable memory comprises memory circuitry configured to store match results for various search keys. The match results are stored in the second memory circuitry during write operations. The model for content-addressable memory may further comprise additional memory circuitry configured to operate as a standard computer memory, performing read operations alone and write operations along with the memory circuitry.

Content addressable memory modeling in emulation and prototyping

Aspects of the disclosed technology relate to techniques for modeling memories in emulation. An emulator is configured to implement an emulation model for a circuit design and a cache memory model for a memory accessible by the circuit design. A workstation coupled to the emulator is configured to implement a main memory model for the memory. The cache memory model is a hardware model while the main memory model is a software model. The cache memory model stores a subset of data that are stored in the main memory model and is synchronized with the main memory model.

Modeling memory in emulation based on cache

Technologies for debugging hardware errors discovered during hardware assisted software verification processes are provided. For example, in one embodiment, a concurrent emulation debug environment including a concurrent emulation system, an emulation trace module and a model state module is provided. The concurrent emulation system includes an emulator and an emulation control station configured to allow simultaneous emulation of multiple electronic designs. The model state module is configured to record the state of the electronic designs during emulation and the emulation trace module is configured to capture trace data associated with the emulation. A backup and capture module is also disclosed that is configured to store the recorded state and the captured trace data for use during a hardware debug process.

Debug environment for a multi user hardware assisted verification system

The application is directed towards facilitating the debugging of suspected errors in a proprietary component when the proprietary component is incorporated into a larger electronic design. Various implementations provide for the generation of a reference model for an integrated circuit design, where the reference model includes the proprietary component and sufficient information about the rest of the design to allow for the debugging of the proprietary component over a period of verification where the error in the proprietary component is suspected.

Third party component debugging for integrated circuit design

Aspects of the invention relate to techniques for using retiming to reduce circuit switching activity. Switching activity values at output ports of circuit elements of a circuit design are first computed based on switching activity values at input ports of the circuit elements and scaling factors associated with the circuit elements. Based on the switching activity values at the output ports of the circuit elements, one or more regions of the circuit design for retiming are identified. Retiming location information is then determined for the one or more regions. Finally, the identified one or more regions are then retimed to reduce switching activity based on the retiming location information.

Switching activity reduction through retiming

Aspects of the invention relate to techniques for adaptive clock management in emulation. A clock suspension request signal, indicating when a suspension of design clock signals in an emulator is needed, is generated based on activity status information of the emulator with one or more emulator resources such as software environment. A clock suspension allowance signal, indicating whether a suspension of design clock signals is permitted considering dynamic targets in the emulator, is generated based on slack information related to one or more clock signals associated with one or more dynamic targets of the emulator. Based on the clock suspension request signal and the clock suspension allowance signal, a clock suspension signal is generated for enabling temporary design clock suspensions.

Adaptive clock management in emulation

A system and method are disclosed for generating triggers within a hardware emulator. The system allows for dynamic reconfiguration of the trigger generation scheme during emulation. In one aspect, input probe signals are received on an address port to a memory from an integrated circuit within the emulator. The memory outputs from a data port, data, which is addressed, at least in part, by the input probe signals. The data output from the data port may be sent through further combinatorial logic or directly connected to a logic analyzer and represents trigger information. In another aspect, the trigger generation scheme may be reconfigured dynamically during emulation. For example, where the memory is a dual-port RAM, an emulation host can write to the memory to perform the reconfiguration.

Memory-based trigger generation scheme in an emulation environment

Growing community of inventors

Wellesley, MA, United States of America

Charles W Selvidge