Infineon Deploys VStation Emulation and Simulation Tools at Multiple Sites
Infineon Corporate Background
Infineon Technologies (formerly Siemens Semiconductors), the 10th largest semiconductor supplier in the world, is headquartered in Munich, Germany. Infineon's Data Communication Group -- with design centers located in San Jose and Dusseldorf, Germany -- designs semiconductors for data communication applications such as LANs and WANs.
THE Munich 256FM Design Challenge
The Munich 256FM, Infineon's Multichannel Network Interface Controller with 256 channels, offers a high level data link controller (HDLC) with integrated framer and M13 multiplexor. This is the first time Infineon has integrated all three functions into a single chip. The Munich 256FM's 800K gate count represents a 4X increase in size from the previous generation chip, and Infineon chips continue to grow in size and complexity.
"Verification is the main task we have in product development," explained Juergen Wolf, Product Development Manager for Infineon's Data Communications Group. "We are spending 60% of our time in verification, so it is a very important issue. For a chip with a gate count of about one million gates, it is essential to have a high confidence in the quality of the product when we go to tapeout."
"My goal at Infineon is to make designs of very high quality that will reach the market as fast as possible," Wolf continued, "Our product development cycle is 12 months from product idea to product release. The market demands that we meet that schedule if we are to succeed. Therefore, it is very important to have the fastest verification tools on the market. VStation meets that need for Infineon."
Infineon Puts Confidence in Mentor Emulation
| "I am confident in Mentor Emulation. VLE is a very stable product." Juergen Wolf |
"After comparing VStation with other emulation tools, we decided to go with VStation because the bring up time is quick; the cost of ownership is low; and the VStation verification roadmap is very impressive," Wolf outlined. "Mentor Emulation has an excellent history of releasing its new generations of emulators every 18 months, and VStation plans to double or even triple capacity on their next generations, while keeping the dollar/gate ratio under control. Our designs continue to grow larger, so we will need these cost-effective emulators with more capacity."
Wolf has been trusting his designs to VStation hardware-accelerated tools for 11 years. "I have used almost all the available VStation tools, including the NSIM hardware accelerator, Voyager VHDL simulation and the VirtuaLogic emulation system with Avatar replicates. In addition, the support is excellent from Mentor Emulation. If I have a problem, I normally get a solution within two days."
VStation emulation is the latest addition to the Data Communication Group's arsenal of VStation verification tools. "Mentor Emulation emulation is straightforward and easy to use," Wolf said, "and the short bring up time is very impressive. With Mentor Emulation, it is possible to be up and running within four weeks. According to my designers who have used another emulator, the same job would take three or four months."
Infineon Deploys VStation Emulation at Multiple Sites
| "Through the use of Mentor Emulation' technology and its consulting services organization, we were able to bring the emulation systems in house, easily integrate them into our design environment and begin using them right away." Juergen Wolf |
"Emulation can give us 1000X performance over software simulators," said Wolf, explaining why they chose to add the VLE to their comprehensive selection of VStation hardware-accelerated simulation tools. "Emulation improves the quality of our chips because it allows us to run tests that we could never do before. We can maybe simulate in a range of less than one real-time second. Emulation allows us to verify our ASICs by running test cases that last several minutes. This gives us an even higher confidence level for tapeout."
Infineon's Data Communications Group utilized three VStation emulation systems for the global design effort on the Munich 256FM chip. One VLE-5M emulator was used by the Data Communications design team in San Jose, California. Another VLE-5M was used by the design team in Dusseldorf, and the application support team in Dusseldorf used an Avatar. "Because our SoC design was being handled by widely dispersed design organizations, it was imperative to achieve a comprehensive emulation environment," noted Wolf.
The San Jose and Dusseldorf teams worked together on a daily basis, supported by the common VStation environment that ensured stability and the expertise of committed VStation application support engineers. "We created the bit streams in San Jose, and transferred them overnight to Dusseldorf where they would perform emulation. If the application support engineers found a problem using Avatar, they would notify us and we would reproduce the problem on our emulator in San Jose. If we could not reproduce the problem, then we would have faced a major obstacle to verification. The system works well, however, and problems found on the Avatar can be reproduced on a VLE-5M -- it doesn't matter at which location you are working."
| "The 100% visibility capability of VStation helps us to identify a problem very fast. Without 100% visibility I would have to perform endless recompiles. So for turnaround time, it is very important to have this critical feature." Juergen Wolf, |
The unique 100% visibility capability of VStation emulation technology is especially crucial for SoC implementations that utilize a variety of IP where problems can be both elusive and difficult to replicate. Development of the Munich 256FM chip depended heavily upon IP developed for previous Infineon chips, and Infineon depended on the VLE's powerful debug to ensure that the IP would work when integrated together into the new chip.
"The VStation emulation system and its 100% visibility feature were critical for finding bugs," Wolf confirmed. "For example, on the Munich 256FM we were faced with a feature that simply did not work. We analyzed the code, because we had an idea of what was going wrong, but we did not find anything. During simulation we still couldn't find anything. It was not an essential feature, it didn't kill the chip, but it made us worry because we were not able to understand or reproduce the problem. Next time it could be a very important feature. So we brought in the VStation emulation specifically to solve this type of problem. Within four weeks, we were able to look into the device in emulation and understand the problem, and within one hour we could fix the bug."
Infineon Speeds Functional Simulations with FFX
| "For the Munich 256FM device, we used the VStation Voyager FFX to increase our simulation performance by 15X." Juergen Wolf, |
In addition to VStation emulation, Infineon had been using the NSIM hardware accelerator and the Voyager FFX RTL Compiler on previous chips. "For timing verification, we use the NSIM hardware accelerator," Wolf explained. "In addition, Voyager FFX gives a significant boost in our functional verification productivity since integrating the accelerator at the RTL level delivers 15X simulation performance over a software solution and much shorter compile times. Furthermore, Voyager FFX is complementary to our existing flow and makes acceleration accessible earlier in the design cycle. It's the ideal development tool to shorten our time to market for new semiconductor products with high gate counts, like the Munich 256FM."
"The FFX RTL Compiler is an incredibly fast tool," Wolf testified. "For example, I can compile the 1.1 million gate device we are currently working on in 54 minutes. That used to take us nine hours on a software simulator. VStation FFX enables us to increase the chip quality by completing many more tests in one day."
Infineon Success Makes VStation Imperative
| "It is now required for all Infineon Data Communication products to make use of Mentor Emulation emulation." Juergen Wolf, |
Infineon went to tapeout with the advantage of having simulated and emulated the chip with the fastest available verification tools. "The Munich 256FM has passed all the tests which are necessary to release the final product," said Wolf. "We have a high confidence level that the device is perfect from a functional point of view."
"We are using VStation emulation on our new chip of 1.1 million gates, and the next generations after that," Wolf stated. "We need Mentor Emulation emulation. Otherwise, a mistake or bug would be very expensive. One redesign is approximately the price of the emulation system, so when you catch a few bugs, you are paying for the emulator several times over. Plus it is hard to determine the cost in lost time to market."
"It is impossible to simulate devices now because they are so large, the complexity is so high, and we can create so many cases to test," Wolf concluded. "To verify today's designs, we must have Mentor Emulation emulation."