OCP VIP: A cost effective and robust qualification process for multimedia and telecom SoC designs

By Angelo Di Blasi, Gabriele Orlandi and Stefano Lorenzini, Yogitech
(01/09/08, 12:37:00 AM EST) -- Embedded.com

Open Core Protocol (OCP) flexibility, configurability and scalability are the key elements making OCP massively used and successful into major electronics markets. Upon these characteristics any IP can adopt the best interface for the connection to the OCP backbone with immediate benefit for bandwidth capability. This has made OCP broadly used in many applications like multimedia, telecom and gaming.

In these consumer market domains, time-to-market the key success factor for products; as a consequence a straightforward and silicon proven verification process aiming at first-time-working SoC becomes mandatory to win over competitors and to avoid silicon re-spins.

In contrast to other protocols, the OCP characteristics offer to system architects an unprecedented added value that must be coupled with powerful and silicon-proven verification techniques like the usage of mature VIP for the validation of functionality of the SoC with OCP on board.

On the other hand, the substantial impossibility to define an OCP conformance test exposes SoC to functional risks, a serious worry for system designers. These risks can be drastically reduced when a solid and comprehensive VIP Qualification Process (QP) is available, because this will ensure best-in-class quality level, a measure of reliability, then robustness.

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