White Papers

Modern industrial systems are faced with many key design challenges including: system complexity, real-time performance requirements, evolving standards, and rising costs. ASIC prototyping platforms, such as the Aldec HES-7, provide a platform for designers to implement and verify functionality of industrial systems at-speed prior to silicon tape-out, saving money from costly re-spins. In this white paper, we take a look how to tackle a few industrial design applications with Aldec’s HES-7, which now supports ARM Cortex-A9 based designs by leveraging Xilinx’s new Zynq All Programmable SoC.

This paper highlights possibilities of ASIC verification using FPGA-based prototyping, considering the latest Virtex-7 devices and Aldec HES-7 dual Virtex-7 2000T ASIC prototyping board. In addition, the most common partitioning issues and resolutions are described.

Abstract: Aldec's Server Farm Manager (SFM) addresses ASIC regression testing issues for the fast, cost effective and high quality ASIC design verification.

With the latest FPGA technology advancements and release of large-scale FPGA devices, design teams are facing more challenges than ever in producing high quality HDL code. In order to save time during Functional Verification and Implementation stages, it becomes increasingly important to ensure the quality of design starting from the very early stages of the design process. In an ASIC design flow, a Lint tool (sometime referred to as Design Rule Checkers) ensures early-stage design quality, and maintaining this quality throughout the project lifecycle.

The increasing adoption of large, high-pin-count and high-speed FPGA devices means that right-first-time printed circuit board (PCB) design practices are more essential than ever for ensuring correct system operation. Typically, the PCB design takes place concurrently with the design and programming of the FPGA. Signal and pin assignments are initially made by the FPGA designer, and the board designer must correctly transfer these assignments to the symbols used in their system circuit schematics and board layout. As the board design progresses, pin reassignments may be needed to optimize the PCB layout. These reassignments must in turn be relayed back to the FPGA designer so that the new assignments can be processed through updated placement and routing of the FPGA design. To overcome these challenges, Zuken and Aldec provide an integrated design environment to support these design flows.

Growing customer requirements and technological abilities increase the design complexity of hardware and software. Time to market is shortening as well as the lifetime of new designs. In order to meet all those requirements a new approach to the design process is required.

Abstract: Debugging a design during emulation with a high level of visibility can be a challenge. This paper presents Aldec’s solution to this problem; a debugging environment for SCE-MI co-emulation that provides 100% signal visibility of the design running in an FPGA-based emulator. Debug probes captured intelligently from emulator retain original signals names and hierarchy paths to provide true RTL view of design in emulation.

Abstract: Many HDL designers want to implement assertions and coverage in their designs to catch more bugs faster and deliver a completed design much earlier, but sometimes hesitate thinking the task is too difficult. This document tries to explain the basic ideas behind design properties, assertions and coverage, introduces languages used for assertions and coverage, and provides informative examples of their usage.

DO-254 enforces a strict requirements-driven process for the development of commercial airborne electronic hardware. For DO-254, requirements must drive the design and verification activities, and requirements traceability helps to ensure this. This paper explains the rationale behind requirements traceability including its purpose and resulting benefits when done correctly.

The purpose of the document is to Guide the Qualification Process for Active-HDL Code Coverage tool.

Verification coverage by test is essential to satisfying the objectives of DO-254. However, verification of requirements by test during final board testing is challenging and time-consuming. This white paper explains the reasons behind these challenges, and provides recommendations how to overcome them. The recommendations center around Aldec’s unique device testing methodology that can significantly increase verification coverage by test.

Abstract: As the number of mobile and personal applications grows, usage of embedded processors becomes a necessity. New FPGA devices with so called soft or hard processor cores enable fast migration from the FPGA-only to the SoC applications and projects. This affects not only the hardware alone, but also the tools supporting the latest FPGA devices for SoC designers. Such tools are discussed within this document.

Abstract: PSL (Property Specification Language) is one of the easiest introductions to the world of design properties, assertions and coverage points to anybody familiar with Verilog HDL. The designer of a digital circuit has the best understanding of the operation of the circuit, which makes her or him the best person to define properties that will fire assertion messages in case of incorrect design behavior during simulation or provide valuable feedback to the testbench creator by showing that all desired behaviors were covered during verification. For this reason, the use of embedded PSL properties and assertions is highly beneficial to the engineers and makes their designs better.

Abstract: SVA (SystemVerilog Assertions) language is one of the easiest introductions to the world of design properties, assertions and coverage points to anybody familiar with Verilog HDL. The designer of a digital circuit has the best understanding of the operation of the circuit, which makes her or him the best person to define properties that will fire assertion messages in case of incorrect design behavior during simulation or provide valuable feedback to the testbench creator by showing that all desired behaviors were covered during verification. For this reason, the use of SVA properties and assertions directly in the design code is highly beneficial to the engineers and makes their designs better.

Abstract: PSL (Property Specification Language) is the easiest introduction to the world of design properties, assertions and coverage points to anybody familiar with VHDL (VHSIC Hardware Description Language). The designer of a digital circuit has the best understanding of the operation of the circuit, which makes her or him the best person to define properties that will fire assertion messages in case of incorrect design behavior during simulation or provide valuable feedback to the testbench creator by showing that all desired behaviors were covered during verification. For this reason, the use of embedded PSL properties and assertions is highly beneficial to the engineers and makes their designs better.

Abstract: This paper presents a new approach in domain of high level digital circuits simulation and modeling that benefits from high level mathematical environment delivered by MATLAB. It allows to integrate design process and directly verify obtained results with mathematical formulas or complex operations that are not available in standard HDL languages. A part of HDL code can be placed for verification purposes inside the advanced mathematical model or can execute complex calculation. Paper presents problems that are introduced by hybrid simulation and modeling environment concerning data representation, simulation process and optimal performance.

Abstract: This paper describes the theoretical background, current status and future challenges facing interoperable cryptosystem for safe delivery of Intellectual Property (IP) to be used in VHDL and SystemVerilog design and verification. The system must be reliable, and interoperable, i.e. enable safe use of IP source in a variety of tools. IEEE P1735 Working Group currently develops proposed standard describing such a cryptosystem.

Abstract: Modern ASIC and FPGA designs can usually be treated as complete systems, not just electronic circuits. Design and verification of those systems typically requires the use of transaction-level descriptions, so enhanced support for transactions in verification tools is critical. This paper describes basic transaction related terms and the new transaction recording and visualization solution available in Riviera-PRO™ simulator.

Floating-point arithmetic becomes a widely used format in digital system design. For example, DSP applications often demand high precision while operating with large dynamic ranges. The IEEE 754™-2008 floating-point arithmetic standard fulfills this criterion but it might be extremely hard to comprehend and use. This document discusses challenges associated with debugging floating-point arithmetic designs and explains how to tackle them using the tools available with your floating-point aware IDE.