Cadence Palladium XP Enables QLogic to Rapidly Develop Sophisticated Network Switch

System-level Verification Ensures Success of Complex Switch Design

SAN JOSE, Calif., 31 Oct 2011 -- Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS), a leader in global electronic design innovation, today announced that QLogic has deployed the Cadence Palladium XP Verification Computing Platform to speed the design of a complex network switch. QLogic manufactures Fibre Channel, 10Gb Ethernet converged networking and InfiniBand switches for storage and high-performance computing (HPC) applications. These switches provide the port-density and performance required to drive storage, data and HPC networks of leading OEMs and end users worldwide. Using the Palladium XP system, QLogic dramatically reduced the design time associated with developing a complex, multi-million-gate system-on-chip (SoC) needed to drive scalable, non-blocking switch architectures across the various protocols required from datacenter-class switching solutions.

“QLogic continues to expand its market share by delivering technologies that transform data centers and storage networks around the globe,” said Jesse Parker, vice president and general manager, Network Solutions Group, QLogic. “Specialized SoCs are a critical element that enable us to deliver network switches optimized for the power, performance and bandwidth requirements of our customers. The Palladium XP platform gave us the ability to test our design at the system level much earlier in the design cycle and much faster than ever before.”

“At the forefront of high performance network switch design, QLogic is a prime example of how customers rely on Palladium XP to ensure they can deliver industry-leading system solutions in tight time-to-market constraints,” said Michał Siwiński, group director of product marketing, System & Software Realization Group at Cadence. “By delivering a critical platform that enables on-time SoC and system development, Cadence is helping the world’s leading semiconductor and systems companies maintain their competitive edge.”

Palladium XP Verification Computing Platform, part of the Cadence System Development Suite, unifies simulation, acceleration and emulation capabilities in a single environment, enabling efficient hardware-software system verification.

The platform enabled QLogic to explore the complex interaction of buses, ports and crossbars simultaneously at the system level. QLogic leveraged the capacity, speed and debugging capabilities of the Palladium XP to reduce the verification time associated with its latest design, even as compared to earlier, less complex switches. Featuring a much deeper trace buffer, Palladium XP gave QLogic the ability to examine a trace window that was more than 10x the size of previous-generation switches – a requirement for system-level verification of high-node-count switch designs.

Palladium XP also provided the capacity required for the creation of a synthesizable test bench. QLogic was able to incorporate test-bench parameters into read-only memory (ROM) for advanced system-level testing. The highly scalable system easily accommodated the QLogic multimillion-gate design, while giving the company room to grow for next-generation designs.

About Palladium XP

The Cadence Palladium XP Verification Computing Platform is part of the Cadence System Development Suite, and aims to reduce hardware-software system integration time by up to 50 percent. Palladium XP provides developers a high-fidelity representation of their design so they can quickly and confidently locate and fix bugs, resulting in higher quality systems and subsystems. The platform supports design configurations up to 2 billion gates, delivering performance up to 4MHz and supporting up to 512 users simultaneously. It also provides unique system-level power analysis to better predict and design consumer electronics. Design teams can “hot swap” simulation with acceleration and emulation in a scalable metric-driven verification environment as needed, which speeds the verification process and enables early access to testing embedded software and evaluating performance implications of different IP and/or system architectures.

About Cadence

Cadence enables global electronic design innovation and plays an essential role in the creation of today's integrated circuits and electronics. Customers use Cadence software, hardware, IP, and services to design and verify advanced semiconductors, consumer electronics, networking and telecommunications equipment, and computer systems. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world to serve the global electronics industry. More information about the company, its products, and services is available at www.cadence.com.