Fast prototyping: a system design flow for fast design, prototyping and efficient IP reuse

Abstract

This paper describes a new design flow that significantly reduces time-to-market for highly complex multiprocessor-based system-on-chip (SOC) designs. This flow, put in place within STMicroelectronics and which is called fast prototyping, allows concurrent hardware and software development, early verification and enables the productive re-use of intellectual property. We describe how using this innovative system design flow, that combines different technologies, such as C modeling, emulation, hard virtual component re-use and CoWare N2C, we achieve better productivity on a multiprocessor SOC design.