Hitachi achieves 10,000 times performance boost using Cadence technology to verify complex design

SAN JOSE, USA: Cadence Design Systems Inc. announced that electronics giant Hitachi, Ltd. established a complex and high-quality functional verification environment with a 10,000 times performance boost by using Cadence high-level synthesis and functional verification technologies and methodologies.

Hitachi engineers verified a complex subsystem, including a next-generation PCI express core, by deploying the Cadence C-to-Silicon Compiler to accelerate their testbench on the Palladium III acceleration/emulation system. The Cadence technology enabled Hitachi to achieve a more exhaustive set of functional test cases.

“We had to deliver high-quality designs in a short time window and therefore urgently needed to develop a platform that performed at a minimum of 1,000 times faster to verify more complex and larger combinations of functional test cases,” said Nobuo Tamba, Ph.D, general manager of the Design & Development Operation, Micro Device Division at Hitachi. “Working with Cadence to apply new technologies created a breakthrough for our methodology.”

First, Hitachi engineers employed SystemC and transaction-level modeling (TLM) to develop complex testbench functions such as auto-pattern generation and auto-response logic, and a scoreboard. Then they deployed Cadence high-level synthesis to generate the synthesizable testbench, accelerating overall verification on a Palladium III system with Cadence transaction-based acceleration. Utilizing high-level synthesis is critical to achieving more productive system realization, one of the main pillars of the EDA360 vision.

“The success of this massive verification effort is the result of having two great teams of engineers working together with our superior system-level technologies and methodologies,” said Christopher Tice, corporate VP and GM at Cadence. “This experience is a great example of how Cadence and our customers work together to achieve efficient system realization.”

C-to-Silicon Compiler is a next-generation high-level synthesis technology; it automatically generates synthesizable Verilog RTL from timed or untimed C/C++/SystemC. The Palladium series delivers high system throughput, verification automation, and advanced debug to perform plan- and metric-driven system-level hardware/software co-verification.