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Platform-Driven ESL Design
Multimedia convergence, particularly in the consumer electronics markets, drives the need for increasingly complex product architectures. The ability to record and play back multiple video streams, high-quality audio, high-speed wireless communications, and many other applications drive the need for designing complex, multicore SoCs with multiple busses and processors and a mix of complex peripherals. At the same time, the software content of these devices has been growing exponentially.

As a result of this convergence, IP, semiconductor and electronics companies are changing their product development strategies to successfully address market demands. They have shifted from developing individual products to creating product "platforms." A product platform defines a basic architecture that is used to derive multiple products over time. A cell phone product platform, for example, may be under development for two to three years, and once completed, it can be used to derive as many as 50 different cell phone products per year for another three or more years.

ESL 2.0
ESL 2.0 refers to a second generation of ESL solutions, which aim to facilitate the design and development of processor-centric, software-intensive products with complex interconnect and memory architectures, in a production environment.

The need for ESL 2.0 has been created by the break down of old design methods and the emergence of new design challenges led by the need to design better products faster using multi-core designs. It also aims at breaking the isolation of each design/development team and enables enterprises to get better designed-into customer products sooner. Virtual hardware platforms are at the core of ESL 2.0, which is characterized by the combination of the following:

• The application of ESL technologies and methodologies to a larger community of users including architect and hardware development teams (at the origin of ESL), and now extended to software development, system integration, and test teams.
  
• The rapid rollout and use of these technologies and methodologies in a production environment.
  
• The use of virtual hardware platforms by the larger enterprise and its ecosystem through marketing and business development functions.

Solutions and Products

CoWare offering includes products, services and IP models supporting six platform-based design solutions (Platform Architecture Design, Platform Verification, Application Sub-system Design, Processor Design, DSP Algorithm Design, and Software Development). CoWare products are:

• CoWare Platform Architect is the SystemC-based graphical environment for capturing the entire product platform.   It also provides the dashboard for initiating the platform analysis functions.  
• CoWare Model Designer is the SystemC-based modeling and simulation environment for capturing and verifying complex blocks of IP.
• CoWare Virtual Platform is a self-contained package platform simulation for distribution to software development team as a better alternative to development boards
• CoWare Model Library is an extensive library of processor, bus, and peripheral models that are commonly used in product platforms.
• CoWare Processor Designer enables the creation of custom processors or programmable hardware accelerators and their models so they can be incorporated into product platforms.
• CoWare Signal Processing Designer enables the design and analysis of complex signal processing algorithms and exports these algorithm implementations as blocks that can be incorporated in product platforms.

CoWare's offering also benefits from an extensive list of ecosystem partners increasing the capabilities delivered to our customers.

CoWare is a co-founder of the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI). This initiative was established as a modeling platform that enables, promotes and accelerates system-level co-design and IP exchange. For more information, visit www.systemc.org.

Founded in 1996, CoWare is the leader in ESL design. CoWare's corporate investors include ARM [(LSE: ARM); (NASDAQ: ARMHY)], Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ: CDNS), STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), and Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE). Our worldwide offices include R&D facilities in the United States, Belgium, Germany, and India. CoWare products are in use today at the major IP, semiconductors and electronics companies including Alcatel, Boeing, Canon, Freescale, Fujitsu, IBM, InterDigital, LG, Matsushita, Motorola, Samsung, Sanyo, Sony, STMicroelectronics, Tensilica and Toshiba.