Indian semicon industry attractive for EVE

BANGALORE, INDIA: EVE offers a broad range of hardware-assisted verification solutions on the market, from acceleration to fast emulation and prototyping, with the most cycles per dollar. EVE products lead to a significant shortening of the overall verification cycle of complex integrated circuits and electronic systems design.

EVE products also work in conjunction with popular Verilog and VHDL-based software simulators from Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems and Mentor Graphics. Its sales headquarters in the United States is in San Jose, California. Its manufacturing, R&D and corporate headquarters is located in Palaiseau, France.

Estimating the Indian semiconductor industry, Montu Makadia, Director and Country Sales Manager, EVE Design Automation Pvt. Ltd, said the global semiconductor market continues to grow, driven by the demand for consumer-oriented electronic devices. The Indian semiconductor industry, in particular, appears quite strong and is an attractive market opportunity for EVE.

"That’s because of its push into the digital media, telecommunications and mobile communications markets that presents tremendous growth opportunities for companies such as EVE," he said.

According to him, industry watchers should see strong growth in semiconductors India in the coming years propelled by smaller process technologies, multi-core architectures and the ever-increasing software content in system on chips (SoCs). With more SoC designs, the demand increases for hardware/software co-verification solutions.

EVE’s belief in the Indian market has been so strong that EVE Design Automation Pvt. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary based in Bangalore, was formed in 2007.  EVE DA markets and supports the Zebu (for 'zero bugs') hardware-assisted verification platforms of accelerators, emulators and field programmable gate array (FPGA) prototypes. Headed by Montu Makadia (Mak), the office is staffed with a skilled sales and technical team to better serve local designers and verification engineers.

ZeBu enhances SoC performance

So, how exactly does ZeBu help analyze, benchmark and measure performance of the system-on-chip (SoC) over realistic scenarios? Makadia said: "We have been really successful last year promoting the Zebu based emulation platform. Our existing customers, as well as new prospects in India, have shown great interest and recognized real value in adopting Zebu, not only for hardware verification but also for hardware and software co-verification.

"The Zebu platforms enable software validation and co-verification in a range of several megahertz, thus replacing the deployment of ASIC or prototype boards. For instance, we booted operating systems, e.g., Linux and WinCE, on processors designs mapped into ZeBu emulation platforms at 10-20 megahertz using a transactor-based verification methodology."

So how can EVE's ZeBu be the choice of startups who need first-pass silicon success? Makadia added that startups in need of first-pass silicon success and designers worldwide have found that emulation tools such as Zebu are the only option for debugging hardware and testing the integration of hardware and software within complex SoCs.

He noted: "This is especially true when the task calls for executing billions of cycles in less than one hour and there’s a need for full visibility into the hardware. The ability to track hardware and software interaction offered by Zebu is considered a plus."

ZeBu helps to analyze benchmark and measure SoC performance with realistic scenarios by running at speeds well above one megahertz.  It is capable of executing complete test scenarios within an acceptable timeframe and just shy of running in real time.

This is interesting, and further examination needs to be done to evaluate how the emulation segment is performing and where it is evolving, especially, in India?

Makadia said: "After several years of stagnation, the overall market for emulation has been growing due to escalating complexity in hardware and in embedded software. Other factors have made emulators attractive once again. They run faster, are easier to use, have smaller footprints and are cheaper than older generations."

The growth trend for emulation and hardware/software co-verification solutions will continue in the foreseeable future, especially in India.

Commenting on EVE's strategy, he said that the company will continue to introduce even better performing emulation platforms through innovative architectures and enhanced supporting software to increase adoption by all market segments of the electronics industry.

Further, EVE is evaluating strategic partnerships and possible mergers with synergistic companies to expand the attraction of its offerings.