Cold Spring Engineering Announces Utopia 2 Protocol Checker Based on OpenVera Assertions.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 9, 2002

OpenVera Assertion Verification IP Significantly Reduces

Verification Effort for Complex Designs

Cold Spring Engineering, a verification products and services company, today announced the availability of a UTOPIA Level 2 protocol checker based on OpenVera(TM) Assertions (OVA). This OVA verification intellectual property (IP) significantly reduces the time necessary to create the verification infrastructure and automated testbench environment required for verifying complex UTOPIA 2 designs and ensures thorough checking with its well-documented and easy-to-use interface.

"Assertions and protocol checkers are an important part of a comprehensive verification methodology. By using our thoroughly tested OVA UTOPIA 2 checker, engineers can significantly reduce the verification cost and time of designs implementing the UTOPIA protocol," said Jim Kornell, chief technology officer of Cold Spring Engineering. "Having developed over 20 reusable verification IPs, we recognize the tremendous time-to-market and correctness savings that come from having easy-to-use reliable tools in a powerful verification environment. The OpenVera Assertions syntax is a natural way to develop checkers. Using this language we were able to develop a complete checker in a third of the time it would take using conventional HDLs."

"OpenVera Assertions is an open language designed to enable a full verification flow, including simulation, coverage, testbench, formal, and hardware acceleration," said James Watts, OpenVera program manager at Synopsys, Inc. "Designers are already using an assertion-based verification methodology with OVA and can benefit from the OVA UTOPIA 2 protocol checker to validate their designs against standard protocols. Cold Spring's OVA UTOPIA 2 protocol checker complements a comprehensive portfolio of Synopsys' verification IP offerings."

Key features of the OVA-based UTOPIA Level 2 protocol checker:

-- Compliant with the Universal Test and Operations PHY Interface to Asynchronous Transfer Mode (UTOPIA) Level 2 (June 1995).

-- Configurable data path width of eight or 16 bits.

-- Monitors signal protocol and data flow in both receive and transmit directions.

-- User configurable for either a single physical device (SPHY) or for multiple physical devices (MPHY).

-- SPHY mode octet or cell level handshaking is supported, and in MPHY mode, from one to 31 physical addresses can be polled.

-- Supported cell sizes include 52 bytes (no HEC) and 53 bytes (with HEC) in 8-bit mode, or 52 bytes (no HEC) and 54 (with HEC) bytes in 16-bit mode. In MPHY mode, when there are four cell-available (CLAV) lines, either direct status indication (DSI) or multiplexed status polling (MSP) can be chosen.

For a complete listing of features of the UTOPIA 2 protocol checker, please contact [e-mail] or visit the Cold Spring Engineering web site at http://www.coldspringeng.com.

Availability

The UTOPIA Level 2 OVA verification IP is available now and is compatible with simulators that support OpenVera Assertions. The UTOPIA OVA protocol checker comes with a complete documentation set illustrating usage and configuration.

About Cold Spring Engineering

Cold Spring Engineering is a verification products and services company focused on FPGA, ASIC and system-on-chip (SoC) design verification. Cold Spring's products, IP and services, range from test planning through verification execution to test report generation, all based on tested, reusable verification components. In addition, Cold Spring also has experience with a wide range of telecom and bus protocols at both the design and the verification levels, and has expertise in verifying complex ASICs, SoCs, and custom ICs. Using effective verification methods and thoroughly tested components, verification engineers will be able to not only keep pace with increasing design complexity, but actually reduce verification cost and time-to-market, while improving quality. For more information on Cold Spring Engineering visit http://www.coldspringeng.com or write to us at [e-mail].