Solutions > ROI     Project Manager | System Architect | Software Developer | Hardware Developer Hardware Developer As hardware developer, you’re in charge of developing hardware pieces of the system. If you’re developing a board made of several off-the-shelf components, CoFluent Studio gives you high-level specifications in terms of processors, memories, interrupts, buses and communication links and their expected performances. You can use the results obtained from co-simulation to guide your choice of components and board architecture decisions. CoFluent Studio targets engineers developing integrated circuits (IC) that integrate part or all of the system designed (FPGA, ASIC, SoC, ASSP). The cost of creating an IC is rising with increased complexity and declining manufacturing process geometries. While complexity increases with the number of transistors (following Moore’s law), the context in which systems are deployed is more and more complex and chips are subject to physical deep sub-micron effects. Electronic systems include more and more embedded software, whether it’s on-board or on-chip, integrated into a single chip along with the processors and other components.   As chip designer, you’re responsible for delivering the expected functionality in the chip that you develop and test. You’re in charge of creating test and validation procedures. You develop hardware-dependent low-level software to interact with your chip. Your design window is decreasing while your managers have less tolerance for design revisions. You have to deal with the heterogeneity and diversity of on-chip elements. Defining boundaries and interfaces between hardware and software elements on the system is crucial. Read how CoFluent Studio can help you with some of your concerns. Your Concerns "How can I fully exploit all available silicon?" CoFluent Studio helps you reach a higher level of abstraction that allows you to fully exploit large capacities of nanometer technologies. You create models at the message abstraction level, above the transaction and register transfer levels. "How can I use a platform that abstracts away the physics?" CoFluent Studio delivers a programmable software platform (or virtual architecture) that abstracts away the physics. Then, you can focus solely on getting your functionality and features quickly out to the market. "How can I reduce risks in my chip design and avoid re-spins?" Along with a design environment, CoFluent Studio provides a verification environment for assessing functional and non-functional properties of the design. Test cases are developed within the same model as the chip and drive the simulation execution. Simulation results are captured and displayed in numerical or graphical format for observation and analysis. "How can I avoid logic/functional flaws?" Logic/functional flaws are the biggest cause of flawed silicon. CoFluent Studio lets you verify your functional design thoroughly through an iterative edit/compile/simulate/analyze cycle. "How can I optimize design capture, testing and prototyping?" With CoFluent Studio, you have access to tools that facilitate all parts of the design process in unison, rather than segmenting design into discrete processes. Design capture, verification and prototyping are done within the same environment, using the same formalism, thus bridging the design-verification gap that exists in complex-chip design projects. "How can I integrate/create IP blocks?" CoFluent Studio lets developers integrate and create IP blocks at all stages of the design. Imported IP blocks have to be written in VHDL or SystemC. Exported IP block are in the form of CoFluent Studio models, VHDL or SystemC code generated by the tools. "How can I avoid hardware-software integration problems?" CoFluent Studio generates interfaces between hardware and software components modeled as a communications network. High-level primitives with fully specified data structures are available that can be used later as wrappers for device driver routines or protocol stack function calls. Synchronization issues are already implemented in the semantics of the chosen standardized relation with the outside world (shared variable, event, FIFO channel). "How can I deliver a platform for software testing in advance of the actual silicon being available"? CoFluent Studio allows system designers to model the entire system as a virtual architecture. This computer-based co-simulation model enables them to study properties of a system such as behavior and performances. Software developers can use the SystemC or C++ virtual architecture as programming and co-simulation platform. When software developers need to validate lower-level software (operating system and hardware abstraction layer integration), they can use the virtual prototype generated with CoFluent Studio (C code for a real-time kernel and SystemC platform description) and run it on a detailed co-simulation environment. © CoFluent Design - Get fluent in ESL Home - Company - Solutions - Partners - Resources - Contact Us Legal Information