VSIA releases on-chip bus interface standard to facilitate design reuse

VSIA releases on-chip bus interface standard to facilitate design reuse
By Semiconductor Business News
March 14, 2000 (11:46 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20000314S0009

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The Virtual Socket Interface Alliance today released a new standard, "On-Chip Bus Virtual Component Interface Standard Version 1.0," defining a standard virtual component (VC) interface for both VC providers and system chip integrators.

The OCB VCI 1.0 specification was developed by VSIA's On-Chip Bus (OCB) DevelopmentWorking Group and is an attempt to simplify the integration of VCs into a system. For VC providers and SoC integrators, the OCB VCI 1.0 defines bus interfaces and related protocols for effective reuse of virtual components.

"Early on, the OCB DWG decided that picking an existing bus or defining a new one would not be the way to go since system integrators will continue to use their own buses. Connecting new VCs via a bus-to-bus bridge is not practical," said Anssi Haverinen, chair of VSIA's OCB DWG and research manager at the Nokia Research Center in Finland.

"Instead of inventing another bus, the DWG de cided to define an interface," he continued. "In addition to providing a point-to-point connection, this set of specifications will also connect to a bus, if needed. A simple logic 'wrapper' can be designed for almost any standard or proprietary on-chip bus to make it VCI compatible. Pilot projects have shown that such a wrapper takes very few gates in most practical cases, and has negligible overhead or performance impact."

Other members that contributed to the 1.0 specification included ARM, Cadence Design Systems, Fujitsu, Hitachi, LSI Logic, Palmchip, Philips Semiconductor, Phoenix Technologies, Siemens, STMicroelectronics, Synopsys, and Xilinx.

The OCB VCI 1.0 focuses on maximizing the portability of VCs by allowing VCI-compatible VC to inter-operate with OCBs of varying protocols and performance levels. According to the VSIA, the standard will eliminate the need to modify any VCI-compliant VCs when connecting to a different VCI-compatible OCB. A protocol standard increases inter-operability opt ions for the system chip designers and design opportunities for the VC designers. The guidelines also minimize the complexity of VCI compliance checking by allowing few optional signals.

The OCB VCI Version 1.0 specification can be accessed and downloaded by VSIA members from the VSI Alliance web site at www.vsi.org).