Carbon Adds AXI Analysis Capabilities to SoC Designer Plus

Enables Design Teams to be Productive in Days

ACTON, MASS. –– May 25, 2011 –– Carbon Design Systems™, the leading supplier of software for architectural analysis, performance optimization and pre-silicon firmware debug, today announced immediate availability of its Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture (AMBA®) Advanced eXtensible Interface (AXI) specification Analysis Package for SoC Designer Plus. 

The package builds on the SoC Designer Plus virtual platform by adding advanced traffic-generation capabilities with multi-run profiling tools, giving users a way to optimize system-on-chip (SoC) designs for the AXI protocol.  Customers like Xilinx have used Carbon’s cycle-accurate models and SoC Designer virtual platform to analyze thousands of AXI interconnect scenarios to optimize the performance of their dual-core Cortex™-A9 MPCore™-based Zynq™-7000 Extensible Processing Platform for use in a broad range of applications. 

Productivity in Days

 “AXI interconnects can be complex,” says Joe Tatham, Carbon’s vice president of engineering.  “Validating that the communications path has been correctly architected on even the most straightforward system can be challenging.”

Carbon’s AXI Analysis Package simplifies this task by combining advanced traffic-generation capabilities with post-simulation analysis, enabling designers to execute and compare results of various parameter settings across multiple runs. 

The AXI Analysis Package links the SoC Designer Plus Virtual Platform and 100% accurate models for AXI interconnect with an AXI traffic generator and post-simulation profiler –– a vendor-independent platform for AXI analysis and optimization that gets users productive in days. 

The traffic generator generates or consumes AXI traffic based on a number of scriptable parameter settings.  Once this data is created, it can be analyzed using SoC Designer Plus’ post-simulation profiler, where data from multiple runs can be analyzed and displayed simultaneously.  It is possible to experiment with multiple parameter settings and highlight the effect of changes on the overall behavior of the system. 

A scripting interface is provided for both tools to enable automation and accelerate data availability.  AXI interconnect models can be created automatically from implementation register transfer level (RTL) code using Carbon’s IP Exchange web portal. 

All synthesizable AXI fabrics are supported.

Carbon Design Systems will offer informative demonstrations of the AMBA AXI specification Analysis Package and SoC Designer Plus in the Embedded Software Development Embedded Systems and Software Zone (Booth #1914) at the 48th Design Automation Conference (DAC).  The DAC exhibit floor will be open Monday-Wednesday, June 6-8, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif. 

Availability

Carbon’s AXI Analysis Package is available today. 

About Carbon Design Systems

Carbon offers the industry’s only unified virtual platform along with the leading solution for accurate intellectual property (IP) model creation.  Carbon virtual platforms can execute at 100s of MIPS and with 100% accuracy to enable application software development, detailed architectural analysis and secure IP model distribution.  Its solutions are based on open industry standards, including SystemC, IP-XACT, Verilog, VHDL, OSCI TLM, MDI, CASI, CADI and CAPI.  Carbon’s customers are systems, semiconductor, and IP companies that focus on wireless, networking, and consumer electronics.  Carbon is headquartered at 125 Nagog Park, Acton, Mass., 01720.  Telephone:  (978) 264-7300.  Facsimile:  (978) 264-9990.  Email:  info@carbondesignsystems.com.  Website:  www.carbondesignsystems.com.