Denali Enables System Verification; Data-Driven Verification Tools Target System Designers.NEW ORLEANS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 22, 1999-- Electronic Design Automation (EDA (1) (Electronic Design Automation) Using the computer to design, lay out, verify and simulate the performance of electronic circuits on a chip or printed circuit board. ) company, Denali Software, Inc., announced today that it is shipping its new Data-Verification Suite for system level design verification. The suite includes a unique set of tools and interfaces for accessing and verifying data and data transactions during systems simulation. Unlike traditional logic verification solutions, which tend to focus on the design representation itself, this complimentary approach enables designers to analyze and operate on data and transformations of data throughout the system. Placing assertions on source and signal level events, setting breakpoints, and stepping through source code are all common features in most HDL (Hardware Description Language) A language used to describe the functions of an electronic circuit for documentation, simulation or logic synthesis (or all three). Although many proprietary HDLs have been developed, Verilog and VHDL are the major standards. verification environments today. Denali's Data Verification Suite is now enabling these same types of tasks at a level of abstraction The level of complexity by which a system is viewed. The higher the level, the less detail. The lower the level, the more detail. The highest level of abstraction is the single system itself. that is consistent with the data and data transformations in the system design. "Our modeling technology put us in a unique position to deliver a data-driven verification solution," remarks Sanjay K. Srivastava, president of Denali Software, "Memory plays a key role in today's SoC designs, especially when you consider that it typically consumes 60% to 70% of the system. "It makes a lot of sense to leverage the memory sub-system for accessing the system level data transactions for verification." What Customers Say "Denali's modeling technology is an important part of our design flow," says Gregory Jackson, Senior CAD Developer at Silicon Graphics Inc. "The Data-Verification Suite now gives us an easy way to enhance the verification environment for our high speed graphics chips. It improves the observability of system level data flow, and exposes valuable transaction data during simulation." "Denali's tools are an integral part of our verification environment," says Hesham El-Adly, ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) Pronounced "a-sick." A chip that is custom designed for a specific application rather than a general-purpose chip such as a microprocessor. Coordinator at CAE (1) (Computer-Aided Engineering) Software that analyzes designs which have been created in the computer or that have been created elsewhere and entered into the computer. Electronics Ltd. "In addition to an efficient memory modeling solution, we gain visibility into the data in our design's internal and external memories. This, in conjunction with the detailed transaction data help us to diagnose and debug errors efficiently." More About Data-Driven Verification In addition to testing assertions and triggering breakpoints, data-driven verification is also a powerful method for actively re-directing simulation to exercise specific design code. For example, to test the error correction code Noun 1. error correction code - (telecommunication) a coding system that incorporates extra parity bits in order to detect errors ECC telecommunication - (often plural) the branch of electrical engineering concerned with the technology of electronic in a design, a designer may want to introduce errors into the memory system. A traditional approach could consume significant resources for writing the low-level testbench code and associated stimulus to get the erroneous data into the system. In a data-driven verification environment, this type of task would be more naturally implemented as a function that operates directly on the data transaction itself. In Denali's Data-Verification Suite, the simple built-in function for error injection could be used to randomly intercept transactions to a particular memory location to introduce data errors into the read word. In this case, the function might operate on arguments such as: read cycles, memory banks 2 & 4, randomize ran·dom·ize tr.v. ran·dom·ized, ran·dom·iz·ing, ran·dom·iz·es To make random in arrangement, especially in order to control the variables in an experiment. with external seed, single bit error, one error per word. More about Denali's Data-Verification Suite Denali's Data-Verification Suite includes functionality for placing assertions and breakpoints on data, creating and injecting data errors, capturing data transaction history, placing assertions and breakpoints on data transactions, and virtual address space management. The functionality is implemented in a set of PLI PLI Practising Law Institute PLI Professional Liability Insurance PLI Programming Language Interface (Verilog programming language) PLI Partido Liberal Independiente (Independent Liberal Party, Nicaragua) functions or an equivalent VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language) A hardware description language (HDL) used to design electronic systems at the component, board and system level. VHDL allows models to be developed at a very high level of abstraction. package, which enable compatibility with all popular Verilog and VHDL simulators. A well-documented C-API (Applications Programming Interface) is also provided along with the complete set of C-based verification functions that can be modified and/or extended by the user to create custom verification solutions. Pricing and Availability Denali's Data-Verification Suite is shipping today on UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). and NT platforms. The price starts at $27,000 (USD USD In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the U.S. Dollar. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. ) and includes Memory Maker(TM), Memory Modeler(TM), Memory Debugger(TM), a C-API and a library of verification functions. About Denali Software Denali Software was founded in 1994 to increase designer productivity by providing complete memory modeling solutions. Memory Maker provides a datasheet style user interface for viewing and editing memory model specifications, and is used in conjunction with Memory Modeler to instantly create simulation models for virtually any type of memory device. The Memory Debugger product enables designers to view data transactions and memory contents during simulation, or can be used in post-simulation debugging to view changes in memory contents while stepping through a transaction history file. All Denali products run on Sun, HP, Windows NT, and AIX operating systems, and utilize FlexLM for software license management. Denali works closely with leading EDA vendors to ensure the compatibility and interoperability of its memory simulation and verification tools. The company is a member of Cadence Design Systems' (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :CDN (Content Delivery Network) A system of distributed content on a large intranet or the public Internet in which copies of content are replicated and cached throughout the network. ) Connections, Mentor Graphics' (Nasdaq:MENT) OpenDoor, and of Synopsys' (Nasdaq:SNPS SNPS Space Nuclear Power System ) Tap-in programs. Denali Software headquarters is located at 644 Emerson Street, Suite 7, Palo Alto, CA, 94301 USA. 650/325-7241, FAX: 650/325-5724, www.denalisoft.com Note to Editors: A white paper on Denali's data-driven verification technology and a graphic showing a Data-Driven Verification flow are available on request. Memory Maker, Memory Modeler and Memory Debugger are trademarks of Denali Software, Inc. Denali Software acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services. |
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