Synopsys Virtual Prototyping Solutions for Embedded Software Development and Hardware Software Co-Design

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Develop Electronic Systems Earlier and Faster

Semiconductor and electronics companies developing the next generation of wireless, consumer and automotive devices are facing growing challenges. These include verifying more complex hardware, developing software in a timely and cost effective manner and communicating specification across their supply chain efficiently. Virtual prototypes are fast, fully functional software models of systems under development that execute unmodified production code and provide a higher debugging/analysis efficiency. They are used for software-driven verification, embedded software development, integration and test, and to improve communication within the supply chain. Virtual prototyping results in faster time-to-market through both earlier and faster development. The Synopsys Virtual Prototyping Solution covers authoring tools, model libraries, end user debug and analysis tools, methodologies and services.

Tools & Services
Key Benefits
Use Cases
Application Markets

Virtualizer
Integrated Virtual Prototype Development Environment more

Powerful tool for the creation, assembly, and execution of SystemC-based virtual prototypes for pre-silicon software development and software-driven verification.

VDK Family
Early software development with Virtualizer Development Kits more

Get faster software bring-up, higher visibility and deterministic control together with your existing software debugging tools

CoMET and METeor
Software Development and System Engineering Environment more

Design, simulate, analyze, and optimize complex embedded systems and quantitatively evaluate performance while running real software applications.

Virtual Prototyping Models
Broadest Portfolio of Transaction-Level Models more

	TLM Library for ARM IP	Transaction-Level Models of ARM Processor and PrimeCell IP

	DesignWare TLM Library	SystemC TLM 2.0-Compliant Transaction-Level Models

	SystemC TLM Models	SystemC-based Models for Platform-driven ESL Design

	CoMET/METeor Models	High-Speed, Cycle-Accurate Models

	Pre-Assembled Prototypes	Synopsys-Developed Virtual Prototype Examples

Virtual Prototyping Services
Build Transaction-Level Models (TLMs) and Virtual Prototypes more

Assistance with building transaction-level models (TLMs) and virtual prototypes for pre-silicon software development.

Synopsys delivers the most complete Virtual Prototyping solution including powerful authoring and end-user tools, the largest portfolio of models, standard-based methodologies and expert services.

Embedded software development can start before hardware is available (even pre-RTL)
Powerful debug and analysis tools increase the productivity of developers, test and verification teams
Easily deployed through the supply chain enhancing communication and enabling suppliers and customers’ concurrent development
Synopsys tools, methodologies and services enable semiconductor and electronics companies to optimize the implementation of virtual prototype-based development

The result is better electronic products developed earlier and faster.

Synopsys Virtual Prototyping can be used throughout the electronic products development from specification to post-production.

Software-Driven Verification: Using Synopsys Virtual Prototypes, hardware verification teams create system-level tests. These tests are used to validate the RTL using a hybrid co-simulation environment including the hardware unit under test and the virtual prototype as the testbench. As a result, the hardware can be verified more efficiently in the context of the complete system (hardware and software co-verification).

Software Development, Integration and Test: For firmware, device drivers and operating systems to stand alone, networked or as distributed applications, developers need to ensure that their device software is functionally correct and optimized for performance, power consumption and memory utilization. Synopsys Virtual Prototyping delivers a powerful environment used to develop and execute tests as well as debug and analyze the results. It enables a wide range of embedded software development activities such as device driver development and operating system porting, non-intrusive multicore software debugging, application performance optimization, software centric power analysis, fault injection testing and QA testbench replacement.

Supply Chain Enablement: While developing electronics products, communication between suppliers and customers is essential to ensure the optimum product development. Synopsys Virtual Prototypes are used to efficiently communicate specification, enable concurrent/joint hardware and embedded software development, improve go-to-market strategies and facilitate support activities such as training, technical support and long-term product maintenance.

Synopsys Virtual Prototypes are used in a wide variety of application markets. These include:

Wireless Handsets: From feature phones to smartphones and tablets, semiconductor and mobile handset companies are faced with the need to bring compelling product to market faster. New functionality requirements are often achieved through software directly impacting the hardware required to support it. The Synopsys Virtual Prototyping solution enables wireless development teams to start embedded software development early, develop, integrate and test the software in a more efficient environment as well as optimize their design for key concerns such as power consumption and performance.

Consumer Products: Functionality demands in consumer products are increasing to meet customer expectations on a wide variety of products such as video players, digital cameras to digital TV, set-top box and printers. The complexity of the hardware and software content is challenging traditional development approaches. At the same time consumer products are subject to stringent time-to-market and competitive pricing requirements. With the Synopsys Virtual Prototyping solution semiconductor and electronic products companies perform concurrent hardware and software development as well as deploy more efficient software integration and test environments. The result is reduced development costs and on-time product delivery.

Automotive: The cost of developing and testing automotive electronic systems is drastically increasing. Software is driving automotive systems differentiation. In the meantime, the testing of automotive systems is getting out of control, costs are skyrocketing, safety requirements and standards are driving broader test coverage needs and new system architectures are increasing test set-up and complexity. The Synopsys Virtual Prototyping solution provides a fully virtual environment supporting the automotive model-based design methodologies. It enables automotive semiconductor, tier one and OEM companies to deploy a more efficient development environment for early hardware/software development, integration and test as well as provide a simplified reference executable environment for the co-verification and validation phase.

Virtual Prototyping is a great approach to software development and software-driven verification and many other application markets including industrial automation, networking and aerospace/defense can benefit from its value. For more information on application market specific solutions, contact us.