“Virtual Lab” Moves Emulation Toward The Data Centre

Santa Cruz, Calif., U.S.: The next generation of Mentor Graphics’ emulation platform, Veloce 2, offers a new “virtual lab” to give verification engineers access to software-based peripherals connected to the Veloce platform. Called VirtuaLAB, this feature effectively moves the emulator to a data centre environment where the resource can be shared across multiple projects and geographies. Veloce VirtuaLAB peripherals are available for most popular protocols, such as multimedia video/audio standards, Gigabit Ethernet, USB, PCI Express, SATA, and SAS with more to come.

The Veloce VirtuaLAB builds on the emulator’s ability to run hardware designs written in register transfer level (RTL) at megahertz speeds. By integrating RTL models of key peripherals like USB, Ethernet, and PCI Express, the Veloce VirtuaLAB can create a full target environment that allows developers to validate both the hardware and embedded software before any hardware is manufactured. This significantly accelerates product development cycles. Because the Veloce VirtuaLAB is entirely software-based, it is easily replicated to support multiple software and hardware developers simultaneously.

Veloce2 is built on the company’s new full custom emulation IC, Crystal2, which is at the heart of the Veloce2’s performance and capacity gains. Crystal2 offers fast compile, full debug visibility, and advanced memory modelling. Veloce2 is backward compatible with first-generation Veloce emulators.

Mentor Graphics