SpringSoft Unveils New VIA Exchange for Development of Custom Applications with Verdi Debug System

Debug leader opens access to design knowledge platform enabling user customization and reuse of interoperable Verdi applications for SoC design and verification

HSINCHU, Taiwan, Oct 03, 2011  -- SpringSoft, Inc., a global supplier of specialized IC design software, today launched the Verdi Interoperability Apps (VIA) Exchange, an open platform for creating and sharing custom applications deployed with SpringSoft's Verdi(TM) Automated Debug System. This unprecedented move by SpringSoft is a significant milestone in the EDA industry's shift toward greater openness and tool interoperability that provides access to the underlying design knowledge infrastructure of the industry's most popular debug software and facilitates the free exchange of Open Source applications.

The VIA Exchange consists of the newly productized application programming interface (API) to SpringSoft's de facto standard databases and the www.via-exchange.com website for download of the VIA interface, scripting tools and command libraries that can be used to create customizable Verdi scripts and utilities. VIA Exchange users can also submit scripts or end use applications to the exchange. More than 60 well-defined functions and procedures as well as 30+ scripts and applications have been contributed to date by SpringSoft engineers, Verdi users and ecosystem partners, including Avery Design Systems, NextOp Software, Inc., Real Intent, Source III, and Vennsa Technologies.

"Today's SoC design and verification flow involves vast amounts of data about the structural composition and temporal behavior of designs. Analysis of the inherent relationships between these domains is critical to the successful completion of the flow," said Yu-Chin Hsu, vice president of the Verification Technology and Product Group at SpringSoft. "The complexity of this challenge requires a variety of commercial tools and custom utilities that work together reliably in user flows. Our VIA Exchange platform provides the open architecture and interoperability that makes this possible for all Verdi users and application developers."

"We use Verdi as our standard debug tool for logic design in a wide range of areas," stated Mr.Toshinori Inoshita, department manager of Common EDA Platform Development Department, Technology Development Unit at Renesas Electronics Corporation. "With the VIA Exchange, we are able to maximize its capabilities. We have customized Verdi to be more efficient and easier to use in our environment with the help of VIA scripts, especially for data extraction applications and the addition of features that leverage Verdi's wide range of design information to assist debug and provide our engineers with a standard design platform."

Open Platform for Verdi Customization

SpringSoft's award-winning Verdi software is a highly automated debug system that accelerates design comprehension of complex IP components, design modules and entire system-on-chip (SoC) designs. The system is built on a unified 'design knowledge' platform of specialized databases, analysis engines and APIs. These compile, extract and preserve the data needed to reveal the functional operation and interaction between all the various design, assertion and system testbench elements.

With the launch of the VIA Exchange, SpringSoft is opening access to the wealth of design, simulation and analysis information stored in its Knowledge Database (KDB) and Fast Signal Database (FSDB). Using the same production-proven interface available today to SpringSoft's third-party Harmony Network members, VIA Exchange users can leverage this design knowledge to craft applications tailored to their tool and design flow requirements. The interface features Open Source Tool Command Language (TCL) scripts and C/C++ programs that make it easy to develop and deploy design comprehension, validation and manipulation applications. SpringSoft is also offering a 'how to' Quick Start Reference Manual, training courses and consulting services to assist with skill and program development.

VIA Exchange Promotes Reuse

The VIA Exchange website is a 24/7 online resource to Verdi development tools, documentation and scripts. All scripts are provided in source code format and authorized for user modification and reuse. The current selection spans a broad range of areas, such as design investigation, tool or design flow integration, and design style or rules checking. They are ranked by SpringSoft for a quick reference guide to the most commonly used. The site also hosts a user forum to foster real-time interaction between users.

The VIA Exchange is already enjoying a favorable reception by the Verdi community. Initially introduced to customers in early August, the VIA Exchange is the featured demonstration during the SpringSoft Community Conference (SCC) 2011 series, including the upcoming U.S. events on October 6th in Irvine, Calif., October 18th in Austin, Texas and October 20th in San Jose, Calif. SpringSoft expects participation to grow steadily as a result and encourages interested parties to learn more about VIA technologies, implementation and benefits by downloading the VIA Design Knowledge Platform backgrounder at: http://www.springsoft.com/technology/technical-papers/verification-technical-papers/via .

About SpringSoft

SpringSoft, Inc. (taiex:2473) is a global supplier of specialized automation technologies that accelerate engineers during the design, verification and debug of complex digital, analog and mixed-signal ICs, ASICs, microprocessors, and SoCs. Its award-winning product portfolio features the Novas(TM) Functional Closure and Laker(TM) Custom IC Design solutions used by more than 400 of today's leading IDM and fabless semiconductor companies, foundries, and electronic systems OEMs. Headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, SpringSoft is the largest company in Asia specializing in IC design software and a recognized industry leader in customer service with more than 400 employees located in multiple R&D sites and local support offices around the world. For more information, visit www.springsoft.com .

VIA EXCHANGE LAUNCHES WITH GLOBAL INDUSTRY SUPPORT

"VIA Exchange enables us to enhance our design verification flow with customized Verdi applications. Inspired by our idea and leveraging the powerful built-in design analysis capabilities of Verdi, SpringSoft implemented a script automatically analyzing and tracing the source of 'X' values in simulation. This helps our company to reduce debug efforts especially for gate-level simulation and improve the productivity of design verification engineers."

-- Mike Nan, MTS ASIC/Layout Design Engineer, AMD-Shanghai

"VIA Exchange and open access to the Verdi platform has enabled us to tightly integrate our automatic microarchitecture property synthesis, Insight PSYN, with Verdi giving engineers a robust environment to automatically generate comprehensive assertions and cover properties for their designs and then analyze their simulation results using Verdi assertion waveform and property tools to identify bugs and coverage holes more efficiently. VIA Exchange has the right approach for real EDA collaboration and Verdi is a great platform to build on for our customers."

-- Chilai Huang, President, Avery Design Systems

"NextOp's BugScope Assertion Synthesis tool integrates with the Verdi GUI using the VIA Exchange interface, allowing us to combine our advanced assertion synthesis technology with a state of the art GUI. Our customers can perform functional reviews utilizing NextOp's synthesized assertions and coverage properties and Springsoft's Verdi source and waverform viewer."

-- Yuan Lu, Chief Technology Officer, NextOp Software, Inc.

"Real Intent and SpringSoft have been close partners for years, providing very tight integration between our Ascent Early Functional Verification and Meridian Advanced Sign-off environments with Verdi. The VIA Exchange simplifies the integration and offers more opportunity to build value-added interoperability."

-- Craig Cochran, Vice President of Marketing, Real Intent

"Using the VIA Exchange, Source III was able to quickly and efficiently integrate our DFTView product with SpringSoft's Verdi debug environment, enabling SpringSoft users for the first time to directly display WGL and STIL waveforms using their nWave graphical display tool. This enables test engineers to visualize, debug and validate complex test vector programs by dynamically maintaining the correspondence between the test language source code and the nWave graphical output."

-- John Cosley, President, Source III

"Our root cause analysis solution, OnPoint, provides insight into verification failures and allows users to quickly focus on the error sources. The VIA Exchange platform allows us to visualize the error sources in the familiar Verdi views and thus providing a seamless and fully integrated debug environment to our customers."

-- Sean Safarpour, Chief Technology Officer, Vennsa Technologies