Mentor Graphics delivers simulation and emulation solutions to verify serial attached SCSI products

USA: Mentor Graphics Corp. announced hardware and software solutions to accelerate the verification of Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) second-generation (Gen2) products, having speeds up to 6Gbps.
Using the Mentor verification solutions, designers can test their SAS Gen2 devices integrated on their System-on-Chip (SoC) designs, and develop and test their software drivers and applications prior to silicon being available.

The first new product is iSolve SAS, which has a ‘plug-and-play’ hardware interface to the Veloce family of hardware emulators. It provides a cost-effective and efficient solution to verify new SAS Gen2 target devices with their software drivers in a SoC design. Additionally, an emulated SoC containing a SAS initiator device, such as Host Bus Adapter, can be connected via the iSolve SAS solution to a full-speed SAS disk drive for testing with real target hardware.

The Gen2 solution is also fully compatible with older Gen1 speed devices. This new hardware product adds to the existing iSolve family of solutions for the accelerated verification of applications such as storage, networking, embedded systems, wireless, and multimedia devices.

Complementing the iSolve solution is the SAS transaction-based verification IP (VIP) solution. This delivers both a simulation environment, using the Questa verification platform, and accelerated simulation environment using the Veloce hardware for the verification of SAS Gen2-compliant devices. It generates the appropriate stimuli for the Design-Under-Test (DUT), passing packets, or transactions, of protocol data for tests.

The VIP solution also provides a high-level Application Programming Interface (API) to allow use with multiple test-bench environments, such as SystemVerilog and SystemC, and provides example test environments that can exercise the emulated SAS Gen2 device. The Gen2 SAS VIP is also fully compatible with Gen1 speed devices.

Increased bandwidth and performance requirements of enterprise systems, especially those involving video streaming or high levels of transactional-data, such as reservation or billing systems, have meant that SAS has become an industry standard in the storage application space. Additionally, its backward compatibility with SCSI, and interoperability with Serial ATA (SATA), delivers flexibility and cost savings to enterprises previously not available using their traditional storage environments.

“The growth in SAS products has been increasing rapidly, and is especially important to those in sectors where large data-intensive storage is mandatory for the operation of applications,” said Eric Selosse, VP and GM, Mentor Emulation Division.

“The challenges faced by the creators of such systems are complex, and require high-performance verification solutions to detect flaws early in the development cycle and to reduce risks. To solve these challenges, we created both hardware and software solutions for the verification of SAS Gen2 products. These products provide flexibility and ease-of-use, including the configurable test models that our customers require for pre- and post-silicon testing.”

The new SAS products deliver use modes with traditional in-circuit emulation (ICE) and high-performance, transaction-based simulation or acceleration. When combined with Questa and Veloce2, the latest-generation emulator from Mentor, the SAS products deliver high-performance and easy-to-use system verification for developing SoCs containing SAS Gen2 devices, without compromising delivery schedules.

The Veloce2 emulator is a high-performance, dual-mode accelerator/emulator, delivering twice the performance and capacity of previous generations for both transaction-based verification and traditional in-circuit emulation (ICE). With an extensive portfolio of vertical market solutions, the Veloce2 emulator is the platform of choice for networking, wireless, multimedia, storage, and embedded systems applications.

Both solutions are available for deployment at customer sites effective immediately.