Carbon System Exchange simplifies access to Carbon Performance Analysis Kits (CPAKs), pre-built systems or subsystems with software at the bare metal or operating system (O/S) level. The new web portal found at www.carbonsystemexchange.com features software, intellectual property (IP) and systems solutions from numerous providers, including Altera, ARM, Arteris, Breker Verification Systems, Cadence Design Systems, Hughes, Kozio, NetSpeed Systems and Open-Silicon.
"CPAKs have accelerated the time to productivity with virtual prototypes and are a huge success," comments Rick Lucier, Carbon's president and chief executive officer (CEO). "Carbon System Exchange is dedicated to making CPAKs more readily available, while enabling our ecosystem partners to take advantage of the portal to easily deploy their software, IP and systems solutions."
Enabling a Virtual Prototype Systems Ecosystem
The biggest challenge in design and optimization is the ability to run realistic software and system traffic with accuracy and speed. With Carbon System Exchange, users can search by selecting and specifying the combination of IP and software they want in a virtual prototype. The list of matching CPAKs is presented for further refinement or download and users can request CPAK customization to more closely match their design requirements.
Users can optimize the system using multiple benchmarks for performance exploration, combining realistic system traffic to understand cache statistics, memory throughput and latency, and validate assumptions made during the design process under various workloads.
CPAKs can be customized by using Carbon's SoCDesigner Plus virtual prototype solution, in conjunction with models from Carbon IP Exchange, user register transfer level (RTL) code compiled using Carbon Model Studio or custom models written in SystemC or C/C++.
Customer and Ecosystem Partner Quotes
Altera
"Altera's upcoming Stratix 10 SoC devices, which combine a Quad Core ARM A53 processor with our HyperFlex FPGA fabric on Intel's 14nm Tri-Gate process technology, will deliver 2X FPGA fabric performance and breakthrough heterogeneous computing performance," states David Shippy, director of System Architecture at Altera. "To create one of the industry's most advanced devices, we could not compromise on our development tools, and so we chose CPAKs from Carbon along with models from IP Exchange and Carbon Model Studio to deterministically model and design key aspects of the device architecture."
ARM
"Accurate and efficient performance analysis can be achieved using Carbon models of ARM IP and ARM Fast Models which feature in many of the CPAKs on System Exchange," said Hobson Bullman, general manager, development solutions group, ARM. "ARM partners can also utilize these CPAKs to quickly model their own advanced SoC designs and be confident in the results they obtain."
Arteris
"Arteris NoCs are the core interconnect component for many leading-edge SoCs," explains K. Charles Janac, president and CEO at Arteris. "CPAKs on Carbon's System Exchange web portal will become an important component to our rollout strategy for a new generation of technologies. Designers will have a way to accelerate their efforts using pre-built systems and software that feature Arteris IP along with the latest ARM processors."
Breker Verification Systems
"Breker's TrekSoC enables designers to verify the system-level behavior using automatically generated software test cases," affirms Adnan Hamid, chief executive officer at Breker Verification Systems. "CPAKs from Carbon running TrekSoC give users a 100% accurate virtual prototype to accelerate the debugging of the system problems detected by TrekSoC and provide a valuable path to find design issues ranging from cache coherency to throughput concerns."
Cadence Design Systems
"CPAKs on Carbon System Exchange featuring Cadence IP are a natural fit for us," says Martin Lund, senior vice president and general manager of the IP Group at Cadence. "They enable designers to see the value of our IP offerings and configure them for best results. We look forward to introducing additional CPAKs to highlight our rapidly expanding portfolio of advanced SoC IP."
Hughes
"We used multiple Carbon CPAKs for ARM Cortex processors to be instantly productive on a recent project," observes Bala Subramaniam, vice president, VLSI Engineering at Hughes. "One CPAK was used as a starting point for customization along with Carbon Model Studio models of additional components for Ethernet and packet processing. In addition, Carbon's Cortex-R4 CPAK enabled us to accelerate firmware development on our receiver subsystem."
Kozio
"CPAKs are an ideal platform to showcase SoC verification and analysis capabilities of our Verification and Test Operating System (VTOS)," asserts Joe Skazinski, chief technical officer at Kozio. "By partnering with Carbon to offer CPAKs on System Exchange that contain VTOS, we're enabling designers to quickly begin verifying the behavior of their SoCs and customize tests to represent their actual design."
NetSpeed Systems
"We use Carbon CPAKs as part of our internal performance analysis to highlight the coherency features of our interconnect," reports Sundari Mitra, CEO, NetSpeed. "We offer these same CPAKs to our customers on Carbon's System Exchange web portal."
Open-Silicon
"Virtual prototypes play a key role in the development of our ARM-based SoC solutions," notes Huzefa Cutlerywala, senior director of Technical Solutions and MD India at Open-Silicon. "We have used Carbon CPAKs internally to be more productive and have deployed CPAKs at our end customers to help shorten their development schedules. System Exchange provides us a way to showcase this capability, accelerate platform/system development and reach a growing customer base."
Availability and Pricing
Carbon System Exchange is open and operational now to registered users. Pricing is available upon request.
The Carbon System Exchange web portal is available at: www.carbonsystemexchange.com.
Carbon Design Systems at ARM TechCon
Carbon Design Systems will exhibit at ARM TechCon, Booth #421. The ARM TechCon exhibits will be open Wednesday, October 1, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Thursday, October 2, from 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif.
The ARM TechCon website can be found at: http://tiny.cc/pc2olx
About Carbon Design Systems
Carbon Design Systems solutions enable virtual prototype productivity within minutes of download. Carbon virtual prototypes can execute at hundreds of MIPS and with 100% accuracy to enable software optimization and performance analysis as well as firmware and driver development. Carbon's customers are systems, semiconductor, and IP companies that focus on wireless, networking, and consumer electronics. Carbon investors include Samsung Venture Investment Corporation and ARM Holdings. Carbon is headquartered at 125 Nagog Park, Acton, Mass., 01720. Telephone: (978) 264-7300. Facsimile: (978) 264-9990. Email: info@carbondesignsystems.com. Website: www.carbondesignsystems.com.
Carbon Design Systems is a registered trademark of Carbon Design Systems Inc. Carbon Model Studio and Carbon SoCDesigner are trademarks of Carbon Design Systems. Carbon acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services.
ARM and AMBA are registered trademarks of ARM Limited.
For more information, contact: Bill Neifert Vice President of Business Development Carbon Design Systems (978) 264-7302 Email Contact Nanette Collins Public Relations Carbon Design Systems (617) 437-1822 Email Contact