FROM EDN EUROPE: PC-based SoC emulator

At the SAME (Sophia Antipolis Micro Electronics) Forum in October, French verification company Eve was demonstrating its latest introduction, the ZeBu (for "zero bugs") UF (ultra fast) emulator. The product is a hardware-assisted vehicle for software developers that allows them to run development code on virtual hardware at realistic speeds. Its designers say its ideal usage is in block-level verification in large designs, and in hardware/software integration. Faster operation-up to 20 MHz at transaction level-is assisted by Eve's use of C-level interfaces to bus-functional models, entities it calls "transactors". The hardware part of the product is based on Xilinx Virtex4 FPGAs and can host up to 6 million ASIC gates on a PCI card. ZeBu UF has a complete software environment that partitions the hardware design, identifying and correctly handling clocks and buses. The compiler that loads hardware, taking in RTL or gate-level netlists, into the emulator is automatic and allows for partial compilation. Software engineers interact with the system via a software testbench, and there are interfaces upstream to simulation tools, and downstream to real-world debug via a "SmartICE" interface or via virtual JTAG.

Eve, www.eve-team.com.