Electronic System Level Design System Level Design Solution for Performance and Power DATASHEET Modeling Assembly TLM TLM TLM TLM Transaction Level Platform Virtual Platform ^—Software BENEFITS • Architecture design and exploration • Allow hardware / software tradeoffs analysis • Early assessment of performance and power • Virtual platform for software integration and validation • Reference modeling for RTL verification Minimizes risks and maximizes quality of results Vista Architect provides a comprehensive architecture design and prototyping platform that allows users to model, analyze and optimize performance and power at the transaction level. Consumer, mobile, networking and storage systems with multicore processors are rapidly becoming more complex, making architecture decisions increasingly critical, and impacting the design’s competitive advantage. Configuring and verifying multicore HW/SW architectures, and ensuring that the system can carry its load and data traffic capacities, are all critical tasks. Designers can now use SystemC transaction level modeling (TLM) methodology to model their entire system, validate its functionality, quickly analyze various architectural tradeoffs among power, performance and area, and create virtual platforms for SW development and HW/SW integration. Key questions to be answered at the architectural level include: Can the architecture deliver the necessary functionality and meet user expectations? Can the system meet performance and power consumption goals? Can the system be effectively implemented? Can software run correctly and efficiently on the target architecture? Vista Architect is a complete TLM 2.0-based solution for architecture design, analysis and verification enabling system architects and SoC designers to make viable architecture decisions. This is accomplished by prototyping and analyzing complex systems to ensure optimized architectures, shorter implementation time and first pass success. Low Power These days everyone is concerned about power consumption. In concept, while you would like to reduce power consumption as much as possible, at the end of the day it is about balancing the low power requirement against meeting the system functionality, performance, and manufacturability. Vista ESL breakthrough solution lets you tackle the power requirements early at the architectural level and allows designers to optimize power, performance and functionally way before committing to implementation. Integrate with Software Validation of hardware dependent software early in the process is a major objective of software development teams. With Vista Architect, users can test and debug the hardware driven by software or produce a virtual platform to run firmware, operating systems or hardware dependent software applications. Link with OVM RTL Verification While ESL and RTL may use different languages (such as Sys-temC and SystemVerilog respectively), and serve different use cases, the ability to link and reuse elements from both domains is important and offers a broader and more complete verification solution. Transaction level models created at the system level can seamlessly drive RTL sub-systems or be used as the executable specification (reference model) against which the RTL can be automatically verified. OVM defines such a methodology and flow that effectively reuses the transaction level models created for ESL design at the OVM RTL verification stage. www.mentor.com/vista Menlor

Scalable Transaction Level Modeling Methodology Transaction level modeling (TLM) provides an abstract design methodology that supports modeling, validation, analysis and implementation. Mentor Graphics is offering a TLM 2.0 Scalable Modeling Methodology, based on a layered approach that separates communication, functionality and power/timing. The layered approach allows a model to maintain a single functional description throughout the entire ESL design cycle all the way to implementation. The model contains a functional un-timed layer that defines the model behavior for “what” it does, in addition...

• Classes for behavioral modeling • Timing/Power powerful policies • Eases the exploration of various micro-architectures Assemble and Configure the System During the architecture design phase, models can be intuitively instantiated and assembled into a transaction level platform that represents various architecture configurations including interconnect layering and memory hierarchies. Vista’s powerful block diagram editor provides intuitive graphical platform assembly, editing and visualization. By understanding the TLM 2.0 connectivity semantics, Vista is capable of automatically generating...

Hardware / software tradeoff analysis No instrumentation for data tracing and analysis Set of configurable TLM 2.0-based architecture blocks Dynamically switch between “LT” and “AT” modes at run time Testing of realistic use case scenarios Performance and power metrics The unique layered approach for modeling timing and power enables users to quickly change the timing policies for each micro-architecture model and test various configurations and pipeline strategies while keeping the functionality intact. Users can refine the timing and power accuracy based on the target bus protocol from high-level...