Virtual prototyping increases productivity - A case study

With the advancement in technology, more and more functionality is being integrated into SoCs. A typical SoC contains one or more micro-controllers, several peripherals and embedded memories. In the software arena, there is a whole lot of embedded software that goes into products, built using these complex SoCs. In this era of consumer driven economy, all the product design groups are under a tremendous pressure to meet the aggressive time-to-market schedules and still deliver the right solution the first time. This creates a need for having a robust product flow, which enables different teams to work simultaneously and coherently. Following are some of the key activities in any product development flow. • System Engineering • Map customer requirements to design features. • Optimize design to meet the requirements in the best possible way. • Hardware design • Design, develop and integrate different Hardware (HW) or design modules/blocks • Develop reference models for validating different modules/blocks/sub-systems • Software development • Design, develop and integrate different Software (SW) modules • Develop reference models for validating these modules/sub-systems • System Validation • Build a system • Port the software onto the system • Validate the system with true system scenarios. • Customer Delivery