|
Hardware Emulation
In integrated circuit design, hardware emulation is the process of imitating the behavior of one or more pieces of hardware (typically a system under design) with another piece of hardware, typically a special purpose emulation system. The emulation model is usually based on a hardware description language (e.g. Verilog) source code, which is compiled into the format used by emulation system. The goal is normally debugging and functional verification of the system being designed. Often an emulator is fast enough to be plugged into a working target system in place of a yet-to-be-built chip, so the whole system can be debugged with live data. This is a specific case of in-circuit emulation. Sometimes hardware emulation can be confused with hardware devices such as expansion cards with hardware processors that assist functions of software emulation, such as older daughterboards with x86 chips to allow x86 OSes to run on motherboards of different processor families. Introduc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Field-programmable Gate Array
A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is a type of configurable integrated circuit that can be repeatedly programmed after manufacturing. FPGAs are a subset of logic devices referred to as programmable logic devices (PLDs). They consist of an array of programmable logic device, programmable logic block, logic blocks with a connecting grid, that can be configured "in the field" to interconnect with other logic blocks to perform various digital functions. FPGAs are often used in limited (low) quantity production of custom-made products, and in research and development, where the higher cost of individual FPGAs is not as important, and where creating and manufacturing a custom circuit would not be feasible. Other applications for FPGAs include the telecommunications, automotive, aerospace, and industrial sectors, which benefit from their flexibility, high signal processing speed, and parallel processing abilities. A FPGA configuration is generally written using a hardware descr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run software or use peripheral devices designed for the guest system. Emulation refers to the ability of a computer program in an electronic device to emulate (or imitate) another program or device. Many printer (computing), printers, for example, are designed to emulate Hewlett-Packard, HP LaserJet printers because a significant amount of software is written specifically for HP models. If a non-HP printer emulates an HP printer, any software designed for an actual HP printer will also function on the non-HP device, producing equivalent print results. Since at least the 1990s, many video game enthusiasts and hobbyists have used emulators to play classic arcade games from the 1980s using the games' original 1980s machine code and data, which is in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hardware-assisted Virtualization
In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s with IBM CP/CMS. The control program CP provided each user with a simulated stand-alone System/360 computer. In hardware virtualization, the '' host machine'' is the machine that is used by the virtualization and the ''guest machine'' is the virtual machine. The words ''host'' and ''guest'' are used to distinguish the software that runs on the physical machine from the software that runs on the virtual machine. The software or firmware that creates a virtual machine on the host hardware is called a '' hypervisor'' or ''virtual machine monitor''. Hardware virtualization is not the same as hardware emulation. Hardware-assisted virtualization facilitates building a virtual machine monitor and allows guest OSes to be run in isolation. Deskto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Static Timing Analysis
Static timing analysis (STA) is a simulation method of computing the expected timing of a synchronous digital circuit without requiring a simulation of the full circuit. High-performance integrated circuits have traditionally been characterized by the clock frequency at which they operate. Measuring the ability of a circuit to operate at the specified speed requires an ability to measure, during the design process, its delay at numerous steps. Moreover, delay calculation must be incorporated into the inner loop of timing optimizers at various phases of design, such as logic synthesis, layout ( placement and routing), and in in-place optimizations performed late in the design cycle. While such timing measurements can theoretically be performed using a rigorous circuit simulation, such an approach is liable to be too slow to be practical. Static timing analysis plays a vital role in facilitating the fast and reasonably accurate measurement of circuit timing. The speedup come ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Savestate
A saved game (also called a game save, savegame, savefile, save point, or simply save) is a piece of digitally stored information about the progress of a player in a video game. From the earliest games in the 1970s onward, game platform hardware and memory improved, which led to bigger and more complex computer games, which, in turn, tended to take more and more time to play them from start to finish. This naturally led to the need to store in some way the progress, and how to handle the case where the player received a "game over". More modern games with a heavier emphasis on storytelling are designed to allow the player many choices that impact the story in a profound way later on, and some game designers do not want to allow more than one save game so that the experience will always be "fresh". Game designers allow players to prevent the loss of progress in the game (as might happen after a game over). Games designed this way encourage players to 'try things out', and on re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amdahl's Law
In computer architecture, Amdahl's law (or Amdahl's argument) is a formula that shows how much faster a task can be completed when more resources are added to the system. The law can be stated as: "the overall performance improvement gained by optimizing a single part of a system is limited by the fraction of time that the improved part is actually used". It is named after computer scientist Gene Amdahl, and was presented at the American Federation of Information Processing Societies (AFIPS) Spring Joint Computer Conference in 1967. Amdahl's law is often used in parallel computing to predict the theoretical speedup when using multiple processors. Definition In the context of Amdahl's law, speedup can be defined as: \text = \frac or \text = \frac Amdahl's law can be formulated in the following way: : \text_\text = \frac where * \text_\text represents the total speedup of a program * \text_ represents the proportion of time spent on the portion of the code where improve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
FPGA Prototyping
Field-programmable gate array prototyping (FPGA prototyping), also referred to as FPGA-based prototyping, ASIC prototyping or system-on-chip (SoC) prototyping, is the method to prototype system-on-chip and application-specific integrated circuit designs on FPGAs for hardware verification and early software development. Verification methods for hardware design as well as early software and firmware co-design have become mainstream. Prototyping SoC and ASIC designs with one or more FPGAs and electronic design automation (EDA) software has become a good method to do this. Importance #Running a SoC design on FPGA prototype is a reliable way to ensure that it is functionally correct. This is compared to designers only relying on software simulations to verify that their hardware design is sound. About a third of all current SoC designs are fault-free during first silicon pass, with nearly half of all re-spins caused by functional logic errors. A single prototyping platform can ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Integrated Circuit Design
Integrated circuit design, semiconductor design, chip design or IC design, is a sub-field of electronics engineering, encompassing the particular Boolean logic, logic and circuit design techniques required to design integrated circuits (ICs). An IC consists of miniaturized electronic components built into an electrical network on a monolithic semiconductor substrate by photolithography. IC design can be divided into the broad categories of Digital data, digital and analog electronics, analog IC design. Digital IC design is to produce components such as microprocessors, FPGAs, memories (Random-access memory, RAM, Read-only memory, ROM, and flash memory, flash) and digital Application-specific integrated circuit, ASICs. Digital design focuses on logical correctness, maximizing circuit density, and placing circuits so that clock and timing signals are routed efficiently. Analog IC design also has specializations in power IC design and Radio frequency, RF IC design. Analog IC design ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logic Simulation
Logic simulation is the use of simulation software to predict the behavior of digital circuits and hardware description languages. Simulation can be performed at varying degrees of physical abstraction, such as at the transistor level, gate level, register-transfer level (RTL), electronic system-level (ESL), or behavioral level. Use in verification Logic simulation may be used as part of the verification process in designing hardware. Simulations have the advantage of providing a familiar look and feel to the user in that it is constructed from the same language and symbols used in design. By allowing the user to interact directly with the design, simulation is a natural way for the designer to get feedback on their design. Length of simulation The level of effort required to debug and then verify the design is proportional to the maturity of the design. That is, early in the design's life, bugs and incorrect behavior are usually found quickly. As the design matures, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Register-transfer Level
In digital circuit design, register-transfer level (RTL) is a design abstraction which models a synchronous digital circuit in terms of the flow of digital signals (data) between hardware registers, and the logical operations performed on those signals. Register-transfer-level abstraction is used in hardware description languages (HDLs) like Verilog and VHDL to create high-level representations of a circuit, from which lower-level representations and ultimately actual wiring can be derived. Design at the RTL level is typical practice in modern digital design. Unlike in software compiler design, where the register-transfer level is an intermediate representation and at the lowest level, the RTL level is the usual input that circuit designers operate on. In circuit synthesis, an intermediate language between the input register transfer level representation and the target netlist is sometimes used. Unlike in netlist, constructs such as cells, functions, and multi-bit registers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
