SANTA CLARA, USA: EVE, a leader in hardware/software co-verification, recently signed a partnership agreement with ARM. Both firms have agreed to integrate their tools to produce a high-end co-emulation environment.

The ARM RealView SoC Designer electronic system level (ESL) design software will be coupled and integrated with EVE's ZeBu hardware-assisted verification platform for early architectural exploration and prototyping. This co-emulation environment will allow complete system level ARM technology-based SoC modeling including the use of existing register transfer level (RTL) code and offer the ability to migrate from models to RTL implementation.

The ARM SoC designer tool enables the deployment and simulation of system level models of its IP blocks. Using EVE's ZeBu with the SoC Designer tool allows for the re-use of existing RTL code without needing to write new models for existing peripherals. Designs can be progressively moved from simulation into emulation by removing models from the SoC Designer tool and synthesizing the RTL on ZeBu.

Lauro Rizzatti, worldwide marketing vice president and general manager of EVE-USA, said: "Early architectural exploration is the dream of almost all design teams. The co-emulation platform offered through the integration of the SoC Designer tool and ZeBu is an effective means of deploying system level models of ARM and third party IP."

EVE is a global leader in hardware/software co-verification solutions, including hardware description language (HDL) acceleration and extremely fast emulation. EVE products significantly shorten the overall verification cycle of complex integrated circuits and electronic systems designs. Its products also work in conjunction with popular Verilog, SystemVerilog, and VHDL-based software simulators from Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems and Mentor Graphics.