Cadence and Arm Deliver First SoC Verification Solution for Low-Power, High-Performance Arm-Based Servers

Cadence Xcelium Parallel Logic Simulation is now available for systems and semiconductor companies to deploy on Arm-based servers

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Oct 24, 2017 -- Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS) and Arm today announced early access to the Cadence^® Xcelium^™ Parallel Logic Simulation on Arm^®-based servers, providing a first-of-its-kind low-power, high-performance simulation solution for the electronics industry.

Prior to manufacturing, verifying that SoC designs function correctly is a massive task accounting for over 70 percent of the EDA compute workload, and is a key driver for growth and transformation of the datacenter. The Xcelium simulation runs natively on Arm-based servers delivering significant power and capacity benefits, executing both high-throughput and long-latency workloads to reduce overall SoC verification time and costs.

The Xcelium simulator, part of the Cadence Verification Suite, improves runtime through optimized single-core simulation and innovative multi-core simulation. It provides up to 2X speedup for single-core, and 3X to 10X speedup for multi-core simulation tasks compared to previous simulators, reducing long-latency SoC tests and shortening overall time to market. Running the Xcelium simulator on Arm-based servers allows systems and semiconductor companies to best utilize the available cores within those servers to achieve the fast verification that advanced-node designs require. Additionally, the simulator provides automatic partitioning of design and verification testbench codes for fast execution on multi-core servers.

Arm-based servers deliver the high-core density needed to enable accelerated simulation, allowing designers to complete their verification faster. When running single-core workloads, Arm-based servers are able to execute more Xcelium jobs within the same datacenter footprint. When running long-latency workloads, they are able to provide more cores for the parallel simulation. Together, the Xcelium simulator running on Arm-based servers maintain the throughput required to develop leading-edge SoCs and also reduce the total cost of ownership for the datacenter.

“Collaborating with Cadence on the Xcelium simulator is a key milestone in accelerating the electronic design ecosystem for Arm-based servers,” said Drew Henry, senior vice president and general manager, Infrastructure Business Unit, Arm. “The flexibility of the Arm architecture will create new opportunities for more compute core density for EDA workloads, enabling high-performance parallel simulation while reducing the power and floor space required for implementing and validating silicon designs.”

“The rapidly-increasing requirements for the verification of mobile, server, IoT, automotive, and other applications are leading our customers to seek high-performance servers,” said Dr. Anirudh Devgan, executive vice president and general manager of the Digital & Signoff Group and the System & Verification Group at Cadence. "The Xcelium logic simulation technology is very well suited for Arm-based servers, helping engineers to shorten SoC verification schedules.

Arm-Based Server Provider Quotes

“Availability of the Cadence Xcelium Parallel Logic Simulator on ThunderX2 platforms opens up an additional serviceable market for high-performance EDA applications to Arm servers. The Xcelium simulator benefits from high single-core performance and excellent scaling across a large number of ThunderX2 cores, accelerating verification of complex SoCs and improving their time to market.”

- Gopal Hegde, VP/GM Data Center Processor Group at Cavium.

“Our collaboration with Cadence is the first step toward a shared vision of leveraging the Qualcomm Centriq™ 2400 processor for the simulation needs of HPC applications. Qualcomm Centriq 2400, the world’s first 10nm server processor, delivers a large number of high performant cores that are uniquely suited for Cadence Xcelium Parallel-Logic Simulator. Through this collaboration, we are addressing advanced performance requirements while delivering innovative solutions to the growing Arm-based server ecosystem.”

- Ram Peddibhotla, VP of Product Management, Qualcomm Datacenter Technologies, Inc.

For more information on the Cadence Xcelium Parallel Logic Simulation, visit www.cadence.com/go/xceliumonarm. For more information on Arm-based servers, please visit www.arm.com/markets/infrastructure.

About Cadence

Cadence enables electronic systems and semiconductor companies to create the innovative end products that are transforming the way people live, work and play. Cadence^® software, hardware and semiconductor IP are used by customers to deliver products to market faster. The company’s System Design Enablement strategy helps customers develop differentiated products—from chips to boards to systems—in mobile, consumer, cloud datacenter, automotive, aerospace, IoT, industrial and other market segments. Cadence is listed as one of Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For. Learn more at www.cadence.com.

About Arm

Arm technology is at the heart of a computing and connectivity revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Our advanced, energy-efficient processor designs are enabling the intelligence in more than 100 billion silicon chips and securely powering products from the sensor to the smartphone to the supercomputer. With more than 1,000 technology partners, including the world's largest consumer brands, we are driving Arm innovation into all areas compute is happening inside the chip, the network and the cloud.