Aldec launches Spec-TRACER™ – Requirements Lifecycle Management for Safety-critical FPGA and ASIC Designs

Certification Together International Conference (CTIC), Toulouse, France – May 20, 2013 – Aldec, Inc., CTIC Platinum Sponsor  and pioneer in mixed-language simulation and advanced design tools for FPGA and ASIC devices, today announces the launch of Spec-TRACER™, a new requirements lifecycle management solution for use in safety-critical industries in which rigorous certification standards exist; such as DO-254 for avionics, ISO 26262 for automotive, IEC 61508/61511 for industrial and IEC 61513 for nuclear.

Managing and recording how an FPGA or ASIC is developed against its requirements is an increasingly complex task, yet essential for certification and critical to produce high-quality, reliable, safe and compliant products.

“Spec-TRACER is exactly what the avionics industry needs to help satisfy the traceability objectives of DO-254,” said Louie De Luna, Aldec DO-254 Program Manager, “Ensuring that traceability exists throughout the entire development lifecycle is crucial to proving that the product has been designed and tested through a requirements-based process, from top-level design requirements to HDL source code, and from verification test cases to the testbench and through to the simulation results.”

Spec-TRACER helps organizations manage, control and track requirements efficiently throughout the entire FPGA/ASIC development lifecycle to help keep the project on track and within budget. It does this by streamlining and automating the requirements engineering process such as capture, traceability, requirements versions tracking, results management and reporting.

Features within the launch version of Spec-TRACER (2013.05) include: specification import (from MS Word, MS Excel and DOORS), change impact analysis, requirements coverage analysis; pre- and user-defined traceability reports, and multi-user access (which in team-based environments allows project stakeholders to collaborate and communicate more efficiently). In addition, traceability links between requirements, test plans and HDL source code are established easily and multi-directional traceability reports are generated automatically.

Availability

Spec-TRACER 2013.05 is designed specifically for FPGA and ASIC designs, and is available today for use with commercially-available Windows-based design and simulation tools. For more information, white paper and evaluation download, visit www.aldec.com/products/spec-tracer.

About Aldec

Aldec Inc., headquartered in Henderson, Nevada, is an industry leader in Electronic Design Verification and offers a patented technology suite including: RTL Design, RTL Simulators, Hardware-Assisted Verification, SoC and ASIC Prototyping, Design Rule Checking, IP Cores, Requirements Lifecycle Management, DO-254 Functional Verification and Military/Aerospace solutions. www.aldec.com

Aldec is a registered trademark of Aldec, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.