Prototype verification is a technology with high barriers. It connects chip design and final application in series. It requires strong applicability and flexibility to adapt to the rapid development and diversity of chip R&D. Through full cooperation with front-line chip R&D personnel, it can create Using the ecosystem, continuous evolution and iteration of technology can always help chip developers achieve "Shift-Left" research and development and speed up product launch time.
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1.SoC prototype verification: an indispensable part
With the advancement of cutting-edge technologies such as AI and 5G, the vision of "Internet of Everything" is gradually becoming a reality, bringing people a more convenient lifestyle and inspiring endless application possibilities. This not only accelerates changes in the chip design industry, but also puts forward higher design requirements. Moore's Law states that even as chip sizes shrink, the number of transistors on them is growing rapidly. Such a high level of integration requires larger-scale SoC (System-on-Chip) design, and the demand for EDA tools is increasing.
As a necessary stage for successful chip design, tape-out is also an extremely risky process. A small design error may not only lead to expensive economic losses, but may also cause the entire product to miss the market window, posing huge challenges to the design team. There are many reasons for tapeout failure, among which logical or functional errors account for almost 50% of all factors. Design errors account for 50% to 70% of all functional defects, making them the number one enemy of engineers. Therefore, verification is the key to the success or failure of SoC design. However, SoC verification is extremely complex and accounts for about 70% of the entire development time. If you want to shorten the development cycle, system software development verification and pre-production verification must be carried out in parallel, which makes prototype verification far more advantageous than others.For large-scale SoC designs, traditional software simulation methods often become bottlenecks due to insufficient running speed. As a result, prototype verification and hardware simulation have become two mainstream verification methods, among which prototype verification has attracted increasing attention due to its high-speed performance. Prototyping is thousands to millions of times faster than software emulation, and is less expensive and faster than hardware emulation, making it a scalable and cost-effective option that has become the standard for validating complex SoCs. An indispensable EDA tool.
Prototype verification is usually implemented based on FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array), because FPGA can construct a prototype verification system with the same function as a digital integrated circuit, thereby verifying the correctness of the logic function and becoming a front-end verification system. Preferred method. In the past, engineers often relied on manually built prototyping platforms. However, this approach becomes difficult to maintain and scale in multi-FPGA and highly complex design environments. Manual segmentation, logic allocation, and interface design between multiple FPGAs are an extremely time-consuming process with a high error rate. In highly complex SoC designs, it is difficult to ensure the timeliness and quality of the project by solely relying on manual means for prototype verification. This limitation not only consumes a lot of manpower and material resources, but also increases the risk of project delays and cost overruns. Faced with these challenges, commercial prototype verification solutions were born.
2. The birth of commercial prototype verification tools
In 1992, Aptix, considered a pioneer in prototype verification tools, launched a system called System Explorer, which used FPGA and its own interconnect chip to implement a commercial prototype verification tool. In the following years, projects such as Transmogrifier-l at the University of Toronto, AnyBoard at North Carolina State University, Protozone at Stanford University, and BORG at the University of California, Santa Cruz began to explore how to implement HDL chips on small prototype verification boards. design.
These projects explored a variety of possibilities for later validation, and although these attempts were not quite ready for large-scale commercialization, Aptix's success inspired other vendors and inspired more companies to enter this field. Although Aptix has now disappeared in the subsequent wave of mergers and acquisitions, its pioneering contributions to chip verification methodology still have important historical significance and value.
In 2003, when the EDA industry was facing major changes, Mr. Lin Junxiong left Aptix and founded S2C. This bold decision heralds the arrival of a new era. He chose to establish the company in San Jose, California, the core area of Silicon Valley in the United States, and quickly established its headquarters and first R&D center in Shanghai the following year. At that time, China was still a desert in the field of EDA. Silxin gathered EDA elites to delve into China's huge potential market. Soon after, it launched its first prototype verification product at the DAC in 2005, named IP Porter, and soon iterated on the mature and commercially available Prodigy series of products.
During the same period, other companies around the world also began to explore the field of prototype verification. For example, the Dini Group in the United States launched its first commercial FPGA prototype verification board in 1998, named DN250k10. This product is based on 6 Xilinx XC4085 FPGAs, providing a flexible and affordable solution for chip design teams. On the other hand, HARDI Electronics AB, a small Swedish company, also launched the first prototype verification system-HAPS based on Xilinx Virtex FPGA in 2000. However, these products also require engineers to manually build a prototype verification environment.
3. Rapid development stems from fierce competition among EDA companies
In 2008, the American company Synopsys merged with Synplicity for US$227 million and entered the prototype verification market. It also represents that prototype verification has entered an era of rapid growth and fierce competition. It took Synopsys nearly 4 years to truly complete the technology integration and release the HAPS-70 series, which is a truly automated prototype verification product. [4] The previous verification market was mostly based on software simulation and hardware simulation. Since the purchase of Synopsys, the prototype verification market has developed rapidly and has become a mainstream and necessary verification product.
Cadence is also involved. Cadence focused on designing its own FPGA development boards, but did not do so well until Cadence acquired Taray and its FPGA design in solutions in March 2010. Because Taray pioneered routing-aware pinout synthesis, optimizing an FPGA design with the board will help design a prototyping platform. For a while, Cadence and Dini Group collaborated on prototype verification Protium products. In the end, Dini Group was acquired by Synopsys on December 5, 2019 [5]. Today, Cadence is focusing on improving the connection process between its prototype verification products and hardware simulation products to achieve rapid connection between the two.
Siemens EDA (which acquired Mentor Graphics in 2016) has had a tortuous journey with prototype verification. The company licensed simulation technology from Aptix in the late 1990s, but then encountered a series of challenges and development stalled. Later, in order to improve timing drive and multi-FPGA segmentation capabilities in prototype verification, Siemens EDA acquired Auspy and France's Flexras Technologies, which owns "Wasga automatic segmentation software" [6]. In June 2021, Siemens EDA acquired PRO DESIGN's proFPGA product series[7]. Siemens EDA finally achieved comprehensive enhancement of products and technologies in the field of prototype verification.
In addition to some major EDA manufacturers, some smaller domestic suppliers have also begun to provide low-cost solutions. Domestic Yake Hongyu was established in 2009, and its prototype verification product is VeriTiger. Another company, Huasang Electronics, officially started the development and sales of its own brand PHINE Design series prototype verification products in 2014, and has launched its fourth generation of products so far. These are smaller domestic suppliers who are also deeply involved in this field, but the overall market size is not large. After 2020, under the background of "localization", emerging companies such as Hejian Industrial Software and Xinhuazhang have quickly entered the prototype verification market through mergers and acquisitions and self-research.
4. Several major challenges and solutions for prototype verification tools
Over the past thirty years, prototype verification technology has achieved significant progress. Since the debut of Aptix's System Explorer product, prototype verification has given unparalleled flexibility and efficiency to chip design.
With the advent of the new millennium, in-depth customization of hardware and software has brought new challenges and opportunities for prototype verification, making its position in chip design more solid. Subsequently, the three international giants and prototype verification suppliers like Silxin joined the fray. Through strategic acquisitions and technological innovation, they have made the prototype verification system more prosperous and met the rapid growth of the market.
Faced with the increasing complexity of chip design and more stringent requirements for prototype verification, many innovative solutions have emerged in the field of prototype verification. This field has become increasingly specialized, requiring a high degree of expertise and experience to handle many issues such as design segmentation, mapping, interface and communication with the external environment, debugging and performance optimization. Therefore, this also makes prototype verification a technical field with high barriers. Only a few EDA companies can maintain a leading position in this field, and some even require continuous "mergers and acquisitions" to occupy a leading position in this field.
As a leader in the field of prototype verification, Silxin has launched a timing-driven RTL-level segmentation algorithm and built-in increments for the segmentation of RTL logic of multiple FPGAs, interconnection topology, IO allocation and high-speed interfaces between multiple FPGAs. It compiles algorithm functions to deal with these problems; it also continuously introduces new hardware configurations, such as supporting more FPGAs and providing higher performance connectors, ensuring that its technology is always at the forefront of the industry. It also stabilizes its position in the rapidly developing market through continuous technology iteration and service system construction, while also providing strong supply capabilities.
Today, Silxin has accumulated 20 years of product and market experience, becoming China's first leading company involved in prototype verification research and sales, and the earliest domestic digital EDA company. According to CSIA 2020 statistics, Silxin's prototype verification solution has a market share of more than 50% in China, ranking first in the country. It can be said that it has taken over the baton of Aptix, running at the forefront of prototype verification in China, and now it has firmly occupied the throne in this field. Recently, the company successfully released its eighth-generation prototype verification system-Xinshentong S8-40.
With the joint efforts of these companies, prototype verification technology has become increasingly mature. Not only does it greatly improve the efficiency and quality of today's chip designs, it also reduces overall chip development costs. At the same time, through these advanced technologies, design teams can respond to market demands more flexibly, thereby remaining competitive. It can be said that the maturity and popularization of prototype verification technology has brought strong support and countless conveniences to chip design teams around the world, and promoted the continued development of the entire industry.
