Mentor Graphics donates Veloce emulator to Portland State University

WILSONVILLE, USA: Mentor Graphics Corp. has donated a Veloce Solo emulator to Portland State University (PSU), and has worked with the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department at PSU to integrate hardware assisted (emulation) technology information into both the upper division undergraduate and graduate curriculum.

In integrated circuit design, hardware emulation is the process of imitating the behavior of one or more pieces of hardware with another piece of hardware, typically a special purpose emulation system. The goal is normally debugging of the system being designed. Often an emulator is fast enough to be plugged into a working target system in place of a yet-to-be-built chip, so the whole system can be debugged with live data.

“As electronic systems move aggressively toward increased complexity, there becomes a greater demand for design verification and validation engineers,” said Renjeng Su, Dean of the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, Portland State University. “With Mentor’s help, we’ve developed much more sophisticated design examples and labs that allow our students to learn cutting-edge verification methods and tools. This means they enter the workforce with real-world experience.”

At PSU some undergraduates, and many graduate students, take an ASIC design course and the graduate students follow that with an ASIC verification course. These two courses were chosen to introduce hardware emulation into the curriculum because of the natural fit with the current content and because of the relatively large enrollment in those classes. In the Fall of 2010, PSU added coverage of hardware emulation in a graduate course in high-level synthesis and design automation.

“The faculty in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department teaches advanced methods, but until recently their design examples were limited to the component level or descriptions of systems at a low level of complexity,” said Greg Hinckley, president and COO at Mentor Graphics. “With the joint efforts of PSU and Mentor, we have been able to bring the necessary tools and expertise together to raise the level of complexity of classroom examples and challenge the students to achieve a higher level of learning.”