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Veloce proFPGA increases design efficiency and brings SoCs to market faster

The Siemens EDA tool provides a modular, scalable desktop prototyping platform for early software development

The Veloce proFPGA prototyping platform is explicitly designed to be a complement to the Veloce Strato and Veloce Primo platforms. This means that a hardware design can be conveniently compiled for any of the Veloce systems with minimal effort.
Electronic systems of all sizes are routinely being integrated into single integrated circuits (ICs). While the largest systems-on-chip (SoC) make headlines, there are numerous small and medium SoCs that must be implemented quickly and efficiently. Verification of these designs must include hardware, low-level software (operating systems and drivers), and application software. This verification requires three coordinated approaches. The Veloce™ family of verification tools includes the Veloce Strato emulation platform and the Veloce Primo enterprise prototyping platform, which focus primarily on the verification of hardware and its interface to low-level software infrastructure. These constitute two out of the three necessary verification vehicles.

The Veloce proFPGA difference

There are four ways in which the Veloce proFPGA system differs from the prototyping tools of the past:

• Hardware compilation that is consistent with compilation for the Veloce Strato and Veloce Primo systems

• Modularity and configurability

• Ease of set up

• Scalability

The Veloce proFPGA prototyping platform is explicitly designed to be a complement to the Veloce Strato and Veloce Primo platforms. This means that a hardware design can be conveniently compiled for any of the Veloce systems with minimal effort. In addition to making the development process more efficient, it also means that prototyping — and therefore software design — can start earlier, since hardware changes can be easily and smoothly ported to the prototype as the design matures.

The Veloce proFPGA platform is also highly modular. Specific FPGAs can be changed easily, making it much easier to adapt the platform to a new design with new requirements or to upgrade the FPGAs to a later generation without needing to redo the rest of the design.

This modularity can also simplify the integration of IP blocks into a design. During hardware verification, different teams may focus on different sub-blocks of the design. They will develop FPGA implementations of their hardware IP for verification.

When bringing these blocks together as an entire system that can be used to execute software, the pre-existing blocks can be imported at the bitstream level, ensuring that the implementation is identical to the verified hardware version and saving significant compilation time.

I/Os can also be easily configured for each design, making the platform usable for a wide range of designs simply by swapping in the needed I/Os at any given time. The work required to configure a prototype for a given design is minimal as compared to what is required for more typical prototyping platforms.

The Veloce verification triangle

The Veloce proFPGA prototyping platform completes the Veloce triangle. While hardware designers complete their verifications on the Veloce Strato and Veloce Primo platforms, application developers can get an early start on their code, knowing that any hardware changes will be easily implemented as they occur.

It is easy to configure for different designs by plugging in the specific FPGA and I/O modules necessary for any specific design. With up to 20 FPGAs available, large designs can be easily accommodated without expending significant configuration and compilation effort.

The Veloce proFPGA prototyping platform is no harder to plug in and fire up than any consumer box that might be connected to a PC. It can be moved around with minimal effort and with no effect on the design or verification results.

With hardware and software developers all verifying their respective portions of a system at the same time, and with minimal friction when moving between verification platforms, designs can be sped to market with the knowledge that verification of all system elements — including software — has been thoroughly completed.

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