IP-XACT is an
XML
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...
format that defines and describes individual, re-usable
electronic circuit design Electronic circuit design comprises the analysis and synthesis of electronic circuits.
Methods
To design any electrical circuit, either analog or digital, electrical engineers need to be able to predict the voltages and currents at all places with ...
s (individual pieces of intellectual property, or IPs) to facilitate their use in creating
integrated circuits
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny ...
(i.e. ''microchips''). IP-XACT was created by the
SPIRIT Consortium
Accellera Systems Initiative (Accellera) is a standards organization that supports a mix of user and vendor standards and open interfaces development in the area of electronic design automation (EDA) and integrated circuit (IC) design and manufactu ...
as a standard to enable automated configuration and integration through tools.
The goals of the standard are
* to ensure delivery of compatible component descriptions from multiple component vendors,
* to enable exchanging complex component libraries between
electronic design automation
Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing Electronics, electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools wo ...
(EDA) tools for
SoC design (design environments),
* to describe configurable components using
metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
, and
* to enable the provision of EDA vendor-neutral scripts for component creation and configuration (generators, configurators).
Approved as
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
1685-2009 on December 9, 2009, published on February 18, 2010.
Superseded by
IEEE
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...
1685-2014. IEEE 1685-2009 was adopted as IEC 62014-4:2015.
Overview
All documents will have the following basic titular attributes spirit:vendor, spirit:library, spirit:name, spirit:version.
A document typically represents one of:
* bus specification, giving its signals and protocol etc.;
* leaf IP block data sheet;
* or a hierarchic component wiring diagram that describes a sub-system by connecting up or abstracting other components made up of spirit:componentInstance and spirit:interconnection elements.
For each port of a component there will be a spirit:busInterface element in the document. This may have a spirit:signalMap
that gives the mapping of the formal net names in the interface to the names used in a corresponding formal specification of the port.
A simple wiring tool will use the signal map to know which net on one interface to connect to which net on another instance
of the same formal port on another component.
There may be various versions of a component referenced in the document, each as a spirit:view element, relating to different versions of a design: typical levels are gate-level, RTL and TLM.
Each view typically contains a list of filenames as a spirit:fileSet that implement the design at that level of abstraction in appropriate language, like Verilog,
C++ or PSL.
Non-functional data present includes the programmer's view with a list of spirit:register declarations inside a spirit:memoryMap or spirit:addressBlock.
Supporting companies and software
*Agnisys
*Magillem
*Defacto Technologies
*Semifore, Inc
*Synopsys, Inc
*EDAUtils
*Cadence - JasperGold and Interconnect Workbench (IWB)
Cadence Interconnect Workbench
/ref>
*Xilinx
*Lattice
See also
*SystemRDL
The SystemRDL language, supported by the SPIRIT Consortium, was specifically designed to describe and implement a wide variety of control status registers. Using SystemRDL, developers can automatically generate and synchronize register views for ...
References
*
*
**
Further reading
SPIRIT IP-XACT Controlled ESL Design Tool Applied to a Network-on-Chip Platform
*
*
External links
IP-XACT
at Accellera
Accellera Systems Initiative (Accellera) is a standards organization that supports a mix of user and vendor standards and open interfaces development in the area of electronic design automation (EDA) and integrated circuit (IC) design and manufactu ...
*
XML Schema
at Accellera
Accellera Systems Initiative (Accellera) is a standards organization that supports a mix of user and vendor standards and open interfaces development in the area of electronic design automation (EDA) and integrated circuit (IC) design and manufactu ...
*
BusDefs
at Accellera
Accellera Systems Initiative (Accellera) is a standards organization that supports a mix of user and vendor standards and open interfaces development in the area of electronic design automation (EDA) and integrated circuit (IC) design and manufactu ...
IEEE 1685-2014
- free download of the standard.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ip-Xact
Electronic engineering
IEEE DASC standards
IEC standards