How standards will enable hardware/software co-design

Abstract

Reuse of Intellectual Property (IP), or Virtual Components (VCs), from different internal and external sources in Systems-on-Chip, allows companies to focus the R&D to their own core competencies, and to effectively use other companies' specialized expertise for other parts. Such a model can only work if there the microelectronics system industry worldwide can establish an unified vision with a set of open technical standards. This view is quite similar to design practices at the board level today. However, the complexities of future systems-on-chips will largely exceed the ones that we currently know at a board. Moreover, prototypes require costly silicon runs, less signals are visible for probing, less debugging facilities are available, and it will be much more difficult to analyze possible problems when combining several components. Therefore, these virtual components need specific models, to analyse, compare, debug and validate complete system chips and all their interfaces before processing the real silicon, but already starting in the early design phases. This is what is meant today with 'Virtual Prototyping'.