Carbon Design Systems, a supplier of tools for the automatic creation, validation, and deployment of virtual hardware models, joined the MIPS Alliance Program (MAP), adding MIPS Technologies to its roster of strategic partners. Carbon also integrated its models with the MIPSsim instruction-set simulator and software debugger to provide a complete validation solution for MIPS-based SoC design using the MIPS32 and MIPS64 RISC microprocessor architectures.
The alliance program collaboration between Carbon and MIPS enables their customers to rapidly identify and fix bugs in both hardware and software. Carbon Design’s software compiles Verilog and/or VHDL hardware descriptions into high-speed software models. As part of its collaboration with MIPS Technologies, Carbon developed SystemC technology to link these Carbon models directly to the MIPSsim instruction-set simulator and software debugger. This direct integration allows the entire SoC to be quickly modeled and run in SystemC.
The MIPSsim instruction-set simulator executes the embedded firmware and generates transactions for the hardware models. Carbon’s integration targets these transactions to the correct hardware component and executes the RTL behavior. Software developed and tested on the joint Carbon/MIPS model can be easily debugged, while hardware problems can be quickly diagnosed using Carbon’s 100% design visibility, interactive API, and VCD/FSDB waveform capability.
Carbon SOC-VSP software with virtual hardware model generation for MIPS Technologies’ MIPSsim instruction-set simulator is now publicly available. Call Carbon for product evaluations and pricing. MIPSsim is available from MIPS Technologies today.
Carbon Design Systems
MIPS Technologies
