Axis Systems Extends Capabilities of Verification System to Meet the Demands of Networking and Multimedia Chip Markets

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 17, 2001--Axis Systems Inc. today announced two new extensions to its Xtreme® ReConfigurable Computing (RCC)-based verification system that will speed the design of complex system and system-on-a-chip designs: PCI Xchange and XMB, an extended memory board.

Since its introduction a year ago, Xtreme has gained widespread adoption, primarily by designers in the networking, graphics and multimedia markets. Most electronic devices for these markets, such as network interface cards, video cards, and internal modems, have two common verification requirements: first, they contain an ASIC with a PCI interface that must be verified before the chips are manufactured; and second, they contain large amounts of memory that needs to be accessed to fully verify the system functionality. The new capabilities in Xtreme address both of these needs.

Extended Memory Board (XMB) provides up to two gigabytes of memory in the high-end Xtreme configurations. Designers can now access memory directly from XMB instead of having to access the memory in their workstation. Depending on how memory-intensive the design is, verification performance can be improved as much as 200x using XMB.

Axis' PCI Xchange is a pre-packaged emulation board that provides an interface between PCI target boards and a design running on Xtreme. PCI Xchange's built-in rate adoption enables an ASIC design with a PCI interface to communicate directly with the real-time PCI target board, allowing designers to run the target PCI bus at full speed. Without PCI Xchange, designers verifying ASIC with a PCI interface would have to re-design the PCI target board to run at emulation speed, or they would have to design a slowdown bridging solution.

"We've engineered a complete PCI emulation solution by bridging the Xtreme system and the customer's PCI target environment," said Michael Young, product marketing manager at Axis. "An off-the-shelf PCI Xchange board can save companies months of design and testing efforts, and hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Customer example: RealChip Communications Inc.

RealChip, a provider of Voice-over-Packet (VoP) processors that enable the convergence of voice, data and video over packet networks, used PCI Xchange to design the MoNET(TM) S1000, a chip that integrates voice and packet processing onto a single device. The chip contains more than three million gates, more than 500 Kbytes of RAM, multiple clock domains, and multiple interfaces. In addition to a PCI interface, the chip has an Ethernet port, an ATM port, a JTAG and EJTAG port, a TDM port and a UART port.

Instead of verifying all the interfaces at once, RealChip started by removing from their testbench the bus functional model that generated stimuli for the PCI interface, and instead connected a real PCI bus to the design using PCI Xchange.

"We used Axis' PCI Xchange to interface the emulated design to a real, full-speed PCI bus in a general purpose PC," said Francis Pang, director of board development at RealChip. "While the other interfaces were still being exercised by the testbench, the PCI interface was being exercised by real data, sitting on a real PCI bus."

"The mixture of simulation and emulation in one single platform enabled us to bring up our interface very easily," added Pang. "One by one, the interfaces in the testbench were replaced by real interfaces from the hardware."

Pricing and Availability

PCI Xchange and the Extended Memory Board both work with Axis' Xtreme verification system and are available immediately from Axis Systems. Pricing is available directly from Axis Systems.

About Xtreme

Based on Axis' patented ReConfigurable Computing engine, Xtreme meets the needs of verifying today's complex system and system-on-a-chip designs in a compact server-sized machine. Xtreme supports the performance and capacity needed for full system verification, and is the only system that can be used for the entire verification flow. With Xtreme, designers can instantly "hotswap" between simulation, acceleration, and emulation, and have access to full debugging capabilities at every step. Xtreme directly accelerates and emulates RTL, allowing emulation to start at an earlier point in the design cycle.

About Axis Systems

Axis Systems Inc. offers high-performance verification platforms for the hardware and software development of complex electronic system and system-on-a-chip designs. Axis' products help increase confidence in new designs, improve overall verification productivity and shorten time to market. On a single platform and with one design database, patented RCC technology provides software simulation, accelerated simulation, system emulation and hardware/software co-verification. Axis' verification products go "way beyond fast" -- they not only run fast, but also help customers identify and isolate bugs in a design faster than any other tool on the market. Customers include the world's leading networking and multimedia companies. Axis is headquartered at 209 Java Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. To learn more about Axis, visit www.axiscorp.com.

Note to Editors: A photo of PCI Xchange is available upon request.

PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is a popular peripheral bus; its primary use is to connect a peripheral component with memory and the central processing unit (CPU).