Phil Morris
Synopsys

Increasing software content, complex interfaces, reduced time-to-market, rising chip costs and shrinking geometries all add to the complexity of developing the products that consumers demand today.

This article presents the concept-to-silicon flow being developed by ARM and Synopsys using the SPIRIT-enabled tools: coreAssembler from Synopsys with it's native interfaces to the Galaxy and Discovery platforms, and the ARM RealView SoC Designer, a member of the RealView CREATE family of ESL tools, a SystemC modeling and architectural exploration tool. This flow integrates tools and IP from two separate vendors, using design representations in multiple languages, and is enabled through use of the XML meta-data specifications of The SPIRIT Consortium. Together, these tools and IP processors from ARM and Synopsys provide a concurrent hardware (HW) and software (SW) SoC design and verification flow from ESL through to GDSII.