Accellera Systems Initiative Enhances IP-XACT Standard with New Vendor Extensions for Analog/Mixed-Signal and Low-Power Designs

Napa, Calif., USA -- September 30, 2013 - Accellera Systems Initiative (Accellera), an independent non-profit organization focused on the creation and adoption of electronic design automation (EDA) and intellectual property (IP) standards, announces it has developed new vendor extensions for IEEE 1685™-2009: IP-XACT, Standard Structure for Packaging, Integrating and Reusing IP within Tool Flows. IP-XACT is an industry-wide standard that provides a formal way to model IP and enable reuse of IP for future designs. The Accellera vendor extensions are recommended practices that do not change the IEEE 1685 standard, but enhance the functionality and flexibility of that standard to address multiple users of multiple tools. These vendor extensions are fully compatible with the IEEE IP-XACT standard and available in XML format for download under an Apache 2.0 open source license. 

IP-XACT describes the metadata of IP designs and flows and the interconnection of IP interfaces in a standard specification. The IP-XACT vendor extension mechanism supports user-defined extensions to IP-XACT to implement specific tool or flow features, such as to store vendor-specificIP metadata (e.g., GUI-related data). The vendor extensions published by Accellera provide recommended ways to enable cross-company IP-XACT usage in emerging areas of design such as analog/mixed-signal, physical design planning and power.

“IP-XACT enabled IP is leveraged by a wide range of companies,” said Karen Pieper, chair of the Accellera Technical Committee. “These vendor extensions reinforce Accellera’s commitment to shape IP standards that promote reuse and speed designer productivity substantially.”

The addition of AMS vendor extensions by Accellera expands the scope of IP-XACT to include analog/mixed-signal/digital IP, enabling designers to describe electronic metadata in various flows as well as generate hardware description language structures such as Verilog-AMS or SystemC AMS. The newly defined vendor extensions also support the description of power information to generate conventional files such the Common Power Format (CPF) and the Unified Power Format (UPF). Finally, the Accellera vendor extensions also enable descriptions of area estimates for the purpose of physical design planning.

An in-depth tutorial “Verification and Automation Improvement Using IP-XACT,” presented at the Design and Verification Conference, provides technical details about the standard. The IEEE 1685-2009 IP-XACT standard is available in PDF format through the IEEE Get program for download at no charge.

About Accellera Systems Initiative

Accellera Systems Initiative is an independent, not-for profit organization, dedicated to create, support, promote and advance system-level design, modeling and verification standards for use by the worldwide electronics industry. The organization accelerates standards development and as part of its ongoing partnership with the IEEE, its standards are contributed to the IEEE Standards Association for formal standardization and ongoing change control. For more information, please visit www.accellera.org. For membership information, please contact us.