The SPIRIT Consortium Announces Release of the SystemRDL Specification

SystemRDL Interoperates with IP-XACT™ to Enhance the Management and Creation of Registers in Complex Designs

NAPA, Calif.--May 18, 2009--The SPIRIT Consortium™, a global non-profit organization focused on establishing multi-faceted IP/tool integration standards that drive sustainable growth in electronic design, has approved for public release the standard SystemRDL™, a language for the design and delivery of registers to be used in IP blocks within electronic designs.

The SystemRDL semantics support the entire life-cycle of registers from specification, model generation, and design verification to maintenance and documentation. Registers are not just limited to traditional configuration registers, but can also refer to register arrays and memories.

The SystemRDL language has been designed to increase productivity, quality, and reuse during the design and development of complex digital systems. It can and has been used to share IP within and between groups, companies, and consortiums. This is accomplished by specifying a single source for the register description from which all views, software, hardware, and documentation, can be automatically generated which ensures consistency between multiple views. A view is any output generated from the SystemRDL description, e.g., RTL code or documentation. These views include the production of IP-XACT descriptions. SystemRDL is used by many teams to succinctly capture a human readable and writable description from which the rest of the deliverables are produced.

“The SPIRIT Consortium gratefully acknowledges the contribution of SystemRDL to The Consortium by Denali. This contribution provides the industry with a language to comprehensively describe registers and has extended the IP-XACT register descriptions extensively, thereby also extending the usage of the IP-XACT standard into many practicable design areas,” says Ralph von Vignau, president of The Consortium. “SystemRDL together with IP-XACT will provide the industry with a welcome design environment to manage and create registers in complex designs.”

“Denali greatly appreciates The SPIRIT Consortium’s leadership in driving the SystemRDL standardization process and the collaborative effort of its member companies in bringing this common register management language to market. We are excited to see SystemRDL experience rapid adoption and generate tangible productivity benefits – this is a remarkable accomplishment,” says Mark Gogolewski, Chief Technology Officer of Denali Software, Inc.

Richard Weber, CEO of Semifore, Inc., says, “Semifore would like to thank The SPIRIT Consortium and our fellow Register Description Working Group members for their efforts and contributions to the fruition of the SystemRDL standard. We believe that SystemRDL provides our customers with necessary capability for describing their register functions and generating IP-XACT XML. Semifore is committed to supporting these standards and will continue to contribute toward the enhancement and addition of functionality required as design complexity and capacity evolve.”

More information

To download the SystemRDL V1.0 standard, please go to www.spiritconsortium.org/tech/docs/. Example files including IP-XACT source and SystemRDL source for the same components are also available. For product information and availability please see www.spiritconsortium.org/tech/community_support/.

For a more comprehensive overview of the technical features, updates, and benefits of the SystemRDL specification, view the webcast at: www.denali.com/webcast/systemrdl.

About The Consortium

The SPIRIT Consortium is a global organization focused on establishing multi-faceted IP/tool integration standards that drive sustainable growth in electronic design. It is comprised of leading EDA, IP, system integration, and semiconductor companies dedicated to the adoption of a unified set of specifications for configuring, integrating, and verifying IP in advanced SoC design tool sets. For more information on The SPIRIT Consortium and its goals, please visit www.spiritconsortium.org.