PROBLEM ADDRESSED

Market forces are driving electronic system developers to design ever more complex products whose architectures are based on a large and growing mix of multiprocessors, software, complex peripherals and intellectual property cores.  With the added pressure to integrate these sub-systems into a single piece of silicon, be it an ASIC, or more commonly an FPGA, managing the development - cycles of these systems has become an overwhelming challenge. 

Another “painful problem” is that today electronics companies must deal with rapid market changes that impact product direction and strategy.  Making complex changes in existing products, or creating new ones, requires the support of new technologies in 'front end' design.

These challenges have given rise to the need for new design methods that require a different approach – at a higher system level, or ESL.  This system level paradigm provides the ability to address both software and hardware development simultaneously (rather than sequentially), allowing full optimization in each domain. Today’s ESL commercial tools tend to cover only parts of this new complex design flow, forcing manual completion of other parts.

OUR SOLUTION

SpaceStudio provides a complete path from high-level specification to prototype, then on to silicon and software. Also, support by technologies in 'front end' design is provided by two powerful features: 1) architectural exploration – with HW/SW partitioning and 2) performance monitoring.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

By supporting the path from specification to prototype, SpaceStudio offers significant advantages over traditional design method approaches: 

Time to Market – shorter design cycle (up to 40%), early validation, immediate start on software development, fast & flexible modifications design, simplifies adoption of re-use culture. 

Development Costs – increased productivity (<man hours), improved performance (>optimization), fewer resources (silicon optimization), risk mitigation (early validation of the specification).

Other – differentiated user products due to ability to explore optimization.