Cadence Announces Breakthrough in System Development to Meet Demands of "App-driven" Electronics

Industry-first Suite Approach Bridges Hardware and Software, Reduces System Integration Time by Up to 50 percent

SAN JOSE, Calif., 03 May 2011 -- Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS), a leader in global electronic design innovation, today announced a breakthrough in electronic design with a new suite of products that promises to cut system integration time by up to half for next-generation designs. Bringing hardware and software development closer together than ever before, the suite features four connected platforms that enable hardware-software co-design from architectural-level development through to prototyping. While some companies focus on a portion of the development cycle, no one company has offered the full suite of hardware-software development platforms until now.

“The acceleration of design complexity is even faster than we predicted a year ago, when we first discussed the disruptive transformation happening in system design,” said John Bruggeman, senior vice president and CMO, Cadence. “Product development cycles are shrinking to as little as six months, putting undue pressure on design teams who must work 24/7 to deliver competitive systems – and even then there is a high risk that their designs won’t see the light of day. Our suite provides a level of connection between hardware and software that hasn’t existed until now and will not only enable the most efficient design methods possible, but will redefine the system design process moving forward.”

Four Essential Platforms for System Development

The Cadence System Development Suite features two new products—the Cadence Rapid Prototyping Platform and the Cadence Virtual System Platform—and connects them to the market-leading Cadence Palladium® XP Verification Computing Platform and Cadence Incisive® Verification Platform. The suite uniquely implements an integrated flow with a common environment that enables system engineers to migrate quickly from one development phase to another.

“The Cadence System Development Suite is an industry first, providing a development continuum that enables engineers to have a seamless migration path through the design phases,” said Nimish Modi, senior vice president for the System and Software Realization Group at Cadence. “This integrated flow embodies the open, connected and scalable tenets of our approach to System Realization and provides a significant breakthrough in addressing the challenges of early software development and hardware/software convergence, leading to a dramatic reduction in development schedules.”

Smooth Migration from Emulation to FPGA-based Prototyping

The Cadence Rapid Prototyping Platform includes off-the-shelf FPGA boards with capacities of up to 30 million ASIC gates, supports standard ASIC flows and provides fast design mapping, multi-FPGA automatic partitioning and industry leading FPGA place & route tools. Its unified environment with the Cadence Verification Computing Platform enables the fast and smooth migration of designs from emulation to FPGA-based prototyping. It delivers high-performance and affordable replicates for early software development and for running exhaustive regression tests while leveraging and sharing the fast bring-up times, superior debug capabilities and comprehensive SpeedBridge® adapters’ portfolio of the Cadence Verification Computing Platform.Multiple Views of Hardware, Software, Memories and Registers

The Cadence Virtual System Platform is a software development platform built on top of abstracted hardware models, approaching real-time speeds. It delivers an integrated and fully synchronized multi-core hardware software debug environment, with multiple views of hardware, software, memories and registers enabling system analysis and tight handshake between hardware and software teams. Combined with the Cadence Incisive Verification Platform, it delivers mixed TLM/RTL unified simulation and common metric-driven verification methodology, reducing the risk of discrepancies between the abstracted hardware model and the eventual RTL. Finally, it accelerates the process of platform creation through automation by enabling customers to quickly build highly configurable transaction-level non-processors hardware models and utilize high-performance processor models delivered by ARM and other third parties.

Introduced today at industry events in Silicon Valley and Munich, Germany, the Cadence System Development Suite is a great leap forward in Cadence System Realization technology, delivering against the EDA360 vision, which cites the need for greater technology integration—bridging silicon, SoC and system—to maximize profits.

“We have used Cadence emulation products for many years, including the Cadence Verification Computing Platform, for system validation on our most important projects, such as NVIDIA Tegra processors,” said Narendra Konda, director of engineering at NVIDIA. “But with increased software content and multi-core designs, today’s electronics systems have become substantially more complex and require a more robust set of technologies to meet time to market and ensure quality. Accordingly, we have deployed the broader Cadence System Development Suite, with elements such as the Cadence Rapid Prototyping Platform offering immediate incremental value.”

“In order to streamline the system development process of ARM-based designs, we have collaborated with Cadence extensively over the last 10 years. The new Cadence approach of delivering a single environment for virtual prototyping, emulation and FPGA-based prototyping is clearly a need for future complex designs,” said Joe Convey, director of Design Enablement at ARM. “Continuing our collaboration to link the Cadence System Development Suite with ARM IP will enable our mutual customers with a pathway to product success.”

The Cadence System Development Suite includes the award-winning Cadence Palladium XP Verification Computing Platform, Cadence Incisive® Verification Platform and Cadence Rapid Prototyping Platform, which are immediately available; and the Cadence Virtual System Platform, currently in use with early adopters and widely available later this year.

About Cadence

Cadence enables global electronic design innovation and plays an essential role in the creation of today's integrated circuits and electronics. Customers use Cadence software and hardware, methodologies, and services to design and verify advanced semiconductors, consumer electronics, networking and telecommunications equipment, and computer systems. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world to serve the global electronics industry. More information about the company, its products, and services is available at www.cadence.com.

Supplemental Quotes

Altera

“The density of our Stratix® IV FPGAs makes them an ideal device to be used in FPGA-based prototyping systems, and the new Cadence Rapid Prototyping Platform takes full advantage of the device's capabilities,” said Vince Hu, vice president of product and corporate marketing at Altera. “Additionally, the productivity leadership of Altera’s Quartus II software makes it a great match for the Cadence mission of reducing system integration time. We are excited to be joining with Cadence in providing the next generation of FPGA-based prototyping solution to our customers.”

ARM

“In order to streamline the system development process of ARM-based designs, we have collaborated with Cadence extensively over the last 10 years. The new Cadence approach of delivering a single environment for virtual prototyping, emulation and FPGA-based prototyping is clearly a need for future complex designs,” said Joe Convey, director of Design Enablement at ARM. “Continuing our collaboration to link the Cadence System Development Suite with ARM IP will enable our mutual customers with a pathway to product success.”

CircuitSutra

“Virtual prototype models are challenging to create,” said Umesh Sisodia, chief executive officer at CircuitSutra. “Our collaboration with Cadence combines our expertise developing high-performance models for software development with the Cadence System Development Suite for hardware/software development and verification. Customers find these services invaluable to rapidly adopt new methodology and achieve success on their project.”

Creative Strategies

“Time to market is today’s profit predictor in the electronics industry,” said analyst Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies. “It’s clear that we can’t keep piling on complexity and expect products to be created in the same development window. There has to be a change in the way electronics are created. The Cadence view of system development is intriguing and has the potential to change not only the development process, but enable the technology advances we have come to expect with every new generation of phone, tablet, car or even washing machine.”

Duolog

“At Duolog, we recognize that a comprehensive data management solution is essential for complex IP-based SoC assembly,” said Norman Walsh, chief operating officer at Duolog Technologies. “The Cadence System Development Suite provides the key connections between platforms to improve team productivity, and extend into the vitally important area of software development. The collaboration between Cadence and Duolog can harness the power of our industry-leading Socrates platform to give our customers more efficient, interoperable and scalable solutions for their SoC development flow.”

Gartner

“System integration time is a key element of success for next-generation consumer products and gets more challenging with each successive generation,” said Paul O'Donovan, principal research analyst in Gartner's Semiconductors research group. “The integration of hardware and software in these system designs is a must for companies that hope to sustain shrinking product development cycles in an ever competitive and demanding consumer electronics market.”

Imperas

“We have collaborated with Cadence to address the most vexing challenges for today’s system development teams,” said Simon Davidmann, president and chief executive officer at Imperas. “We’ve created optimized interoperability of our Open Virtual Platform simulator with the Cadence Virtual System Platform to uniquely address software verification, analysis, and performance optimization. We provide the industry's widest selection of models, and our Imperas OVP fast models of MIPS, ARM, Power Architecture and Renesas processors execute at hundreds of millions of instructions per second and provide system introspection available only with Imperas.”

Magillem

“New design methodologies for building hardware and software involve concurrent development techniques and consolidation of design data,” said Cyril Spasevski, chief technology officer at Magillem. “Creation and assembly of transaction-level models are the key barriers for customers to effectively deploy virtual platform solutions. Collaborating with Cadence, we are combining their new Virtual System Platform, part of the Cadence System Development Suite, with Magillem ESL/RTL Platform Assembly to create a unique and complete system level through RTL front end design suite for front end integrators, IP and SOC verification engineers, and software platform engineers.”

NVIDIA

“We have used Cadence emulation products for many years, including the Cadence Verification Computing Platform, for system validation on our most important projects, such as NVIDIA Tegra processors” said Narendra Konda, director of engineering at NVIDIA, “But with increased software content and multi-core designs, today’s electronics systems have become substantially more complex and require a more robust set of technologies to meet time-to-market and ensure quality. Accordingly, we have deployed the broader Cadence System Development Suite with elements such as the Cadence Rapid Prototyping Platform offering immediate incremental value.”

VDC Research

"Today’s consumer electronics companies are struggling to cram more and more capabilities in their products, and then get these remarkably complex devices on shelves faster than the competition," said Chris Rommel, senior analyst with VDC Research. "The Cadence System Development Suite offers an intriguing approach that may help these companies shrink the overall development time significantly through tighter integration throughout the various phases of system development."

Western Digital

“We are extensive users of emulation for RTL verification and FPGA-based prototyping for firmware/software development and system validation,” said Raymond Sarraf, SoC validation manager at Western Digital. “The new Cadence System Development Suite will enable us to use a flow that connects the two technologies (the Cadence Palladium XP Verification Computing Platform and the Cadence Rapid Prototyping Platform) for the first time. This means that we can quickly transition our designs between design flow stages, shortening bring-up and iteration times significantly, and avoiding duplication of efforts.”

Vayavya

“Software driver creation and maintenance is very expensive for today’s complex SoCs,” said RK Patil, chief executive officer at Vayavya Labs. “Our firmware and device driver synthesis solution combines with every platform of the Cadence System Development Suite to speed hardware/software development, integration, and verification.”