Five Key Techniques to Accelerate Software Bring-Up for Multi-Die Systems

By _Synopsys Blog

September 13, 2023

In today’s hyper-competitive chip development environment, chipmakers aspire to ship silicon as soon as it arrives in the lab. More precisely, they measure the span of time between the arrival of silicon in their labs and shipping a product to their customers in hours, not days or months. This means the entire system—silicon plus all the software that runs on it—must be ready to perform as intended.

Software has become an increasingly integral component of today’s electronic systems. From virtual reality (VR) headsets to highly automated vehicles, software-driven systems depend on sophisticated algorithms that make capabilities from immersive experiences in the metaverse to advanced driver assistance systems a reality.

Software content in advanced systems-on-chips (SoCs) and multi-die systems is exploding, making its development complex and time-consuming. Software developers also can no longer wait until the hardware is available before starting software development; these tasks must be done in parallel to meet time-to-market goals. Software bring-up, which ensures the software is indeed fully functional, correctly integrated with and optimized on the targeted silicon, and good to go, is a critical step in terms of overall system quality and performance.

What is the fastest and most effective way to bring up software given these challenges? And how do massive multi-die systems affect the process, given that each heterogeneous die can be a system on its own, complete with an entire software stack, and all must work together to deliver the function of the multi-die system? In this blog post, we’ll highlight how multi-die systems, with all their complexities and interdependencies, create new challenges for software bring-up, and how technologies including virtual prototyping and electronics digital twins can help you overcome these challenges.

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