Virtual Prototyping a Better Approach to reduce product Time to Market

Abstract

With the advancements in technology, the number of functionalities are being integrated into SoCs are increasing rapidly. A typical SoC consists of, microprocessor, microcontroller or Digital signal processor (DSP) core, and the multiprocessor SoCs (MPSoC) [4] are having more than one processor core. Along with processor, the SoC will also have memory blocks including RAM, ROM, EEROM and flash memory, timing sources including oscillators, other peripherals including real-time timers and counters, power-on reset generators. SoC will also contains external interfaces including USB, Ethernet, FireWire, also analog interfaces including ADCs and DACs, Voltage regulators and power management circuits, and a bus to connect all these blocks all on one chip. Along with the hardware SoC also contains the software to control these hardware. The below mentioned are some of the key activities in any product development flow.