Avery Announces 800G Ethernet VIP virtual network co-simulation platform, enabling SoC pre-silicon validation in real networked application environments

Fully tested VIP can be leveraged in virtual networking scenarios and across all network stack layers and protocols, accelerating verification closure

SANTA CLARA, CA At the Flash Memory Summit (#FMS2022) – August 2, 2022 – Avery Design Systems today announced that its fully-tested Verification IP (VIP) for 800Gbps Ethernet can now be used to perform virtual network co-simulation for the full layer Ethernet 2-7 network stack. The combination of the VIP and a virtual co-simulation/co-emulation system enables the running of full hardware/software system verification on pre-silicon SoC RTL and software integrations. System designers can now perform system-level validation of an SoC design's Ethernet and TCP/IP network interfaces using real network traffic workloads of communication, datacenter, and storage network protocols running on either host OS or virtual machine (guest OS) platforms.

Virtual network co-simulation solution is the latest extension of Avery's virtual platform co-simulation/co-emulation strategy for next generation pre-silicon validation of interfaces in system-level environments. With its approach, virtual platform co-simulation virtualizes host or embedded devices such as PCIe, CXL, AMBA, and now Ethernet interfaces, so verification can be performed under actual operational conditions, including verification of software integration.

This comes on the heels of other news from Avery Design Systems this week including support for CXL 3.0 and that its NVMe, PCIe, and AXI VIP have been adopted by TenaFe for new solid state storage controllers.

Ethernet support for memory interface verification

A key application for utilizing Ethernet VIP is NVMe-over-TCP which applies TCP application interfaces in pure software-only host driver or optimized hardware offload to implement disaggregated, composable block storage systems across a standard IP and Ethernet network. Alternatively, in large, distributed compute server architectures, designers can incorporate NVMe-MI in-band usage models over IP control path networks for centralized discover and control

"Leveraging the bandwidth and performance of Ethernet has become increasingly important in a range of data transfer intensive applications and time-to-market is a major concern for product developers. Performing full hardware/software, system-level verification of DPUs, SmartNICs, switches, and routers can be accelerated by weeks to months using virtual network co-simulation. With this solution, any host OS or guest OS (VM) user space program or Linux network utility can communicate with SoC RTL/FW via Avery's SystemVerilog MAC/PHY virtual NIC VIP,” said Chris Browy, vice president of sales and marketing at Avery.

Examples of real programs or utilities supported include:

• SSH
• Linux kernel SW-based IPsec/MACsec
• TCP/IP client-server programs
• NVMe-oF SDKs particularly NVMe/TCP but including NVMe/RoCE, NVMe/iWARP
• Custom OS drivers, SDKs, and user space programs

The virtual network device can be viewed as a simple Ethernet device, which instead of receiving packets from a physical media (Ethernet NIC), receives them from the Ethernet MAC/PHY RX VIP which passes them up to the OS network stack. The Ethernet MAC/PHY VIP is connected to the SoC design's interfaces that are both part of the SystemVerilog simulation testbench.

Conversely, instead of the OS network stack sending packets via physical media they get sent through the Ethernet MAC/PHY VIP towards the SoC design's ethernet RX interfaces.

Avery Design Systems

Founded in 1999, Avery Design Systems, Inc. enables system and SOC design teams to achieve dramatic functional verification productivity improvements through the use of formal analysis applications for gate-level X-pessimism verification and real X root cause and sequential back tracing; and robust core-through-chip-level Verification IP for PCI Express, CXL, CCIX, Gen-Z, USB, AMBA, UFS, MIPI CSI/DSI, I3C, DDR/LPDDR, HBM, ONFI/Toggle/NOR, NVM Express, SATA, AHCI, SAS, eMMC, SD/SDIO, CAN FD, and FlexRay standards. The company has established numerous Avery Design VIP partner program affiliations with leading IP suppliers. More information is available at www.avery-design.com.