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The SPIRIT Consortium Introduction

Ralph Von Vignau, President of The SPIRIT Consortium
The high quality IP-XACT specification enables documentation of IP using XML meta-data and facilitates tool flow integration by providing an API for access to design meta-data descriptions of complete system designs. The SPIRIT Consortium tunes the specifications it delivers to the requirements of the industry. At DAC 2007, several members demonstrated how they have implemented the IP-XACT specification. The following interviews describe what attendees to the general meeting saw at the product demonstrations, as well as a basic overview on The SPIRIT Consortium provided by President Ralph von Vignau.


		Nizar Romdhane, Product Marketing Manager – System Design Division ARM recognizes that tools and IP are inextricably linked and that efficient IP integration demands efficient tool-flow integration. ARM eliminates the error-prone transfer of designs between tools using IP-XACT™ to automatically link its system-level design tools RealView® SoC Designer and AMBA Designer into your hardware implementation and debug flows. Deploying IP-XACT™ ensures that ARM customers can leverage the benefits of ARM tools without the hassle of customized flow interoperability.


		Brent Hudson, CEO Beach Solutions has a complete commercially available System-on-Chip and system integration acceleration flow using components and designs assured to conform to The SPIRIT Consortium IP-XACT specification. Via the Beach EASI Tools Suite graphical user interface, Beach Solutions demonstrates the capture of various IP-XACT assured components; the validation of the data capture; and the subsequent auto-generation of hardware, software, verification design and integration files and a broad range of documentation formats.


		Sean Smith, VP of Marketing Denali's Blueprint SystemRDL™ Compiler provides system-level register design and management capabilities and is able to consume and produce IP-XACT XML for flow integration. The DAC 2007 demonstration showed actual IP-XACT XML for the Leon2 Processor being consumed by Blueprint. Blueprint produced synthesizable RTL, specifications in HTML and FrameMaker, a SystemVerilog testbench, C and C++ files for software development, and IP-XACT assured XML files.


		Brian Clinton, Product Manager The Socrates SoC Integration Framework from Duolog is an open Eclipse-based framework which utilizes the IP-XACT specification from The SPIRIT Consortium to enable an interoperable design flow for complex SoCs including register management, IP capture, SoC IP assembly and IO resolution. The DAC 2007 demonstration showed a highly sophisticated environment for importing, creating, and generating SoC register and memory map related information, as well as showing IP interface standardization capabilities. The Socrates Generator framework is used to show the auto-generation of various IP and SoC design and validation views.


		Victor Berman, President & CEO Improv Systems provides configurable DSP platforms optimized for specific consumer applications such as video, audio, voice and image processing. The Jazz Composer, an automation tool for configuring these platforms, uses IP-XACT as its data base to represent and communicate descriptions of these platforms. The DAC 2007 demonstration showed how the configuration information is input to the system and used to generate complete system descriptions in IP-XACT to design, and verify the platform.


		Amrish Patel, President & CEO SPI-PACK 3.3, the IP-XACT packager from Magillem Design Services, is used by several major companies as a reference platform for creating and validating IP-XACT assured descriptions. At DAC 2007, Magillem Design Services demonstrated the fast and fully automated IP-XACT packaging process for an SDRAM memory controller. Using Magillem 4.0, the packaged component was integrated into a LEON2-based platform. Magillem is a true Eclipse 3.2 plug-in and provides a simple API for development of IP-XACT assured generators.


		Aaron Baranoff, CIO & VP of Engineering MataiTech demonstrates auto generation of documentation, C/C++ HAL, SystemC, IP-XACT linting and semantic checking via MataiTech's flagship tool, NAUET. At DAC 2007, MataiTech demonstrated NAUET's IP-XACT Import Wizard that transforms RTL to IP-XACT. The demonstration also explored the many features of NAUET that accelerate HW/SW co-development and debug.


		Bill Chown, Product Line Manager, Next Generation Design, System-Level Engineering Division Platform Express is the IP-XACT design environment that, at the push of a button, creates designs and associated testbenches. Platform Express generates a range of targets enabling design verification, architectural exploration, analysis, synthesis, and software development. At DAC 2007, Mentor Graphics demonstrated how the IP-XACT XML databook format can be used to automate the construction of designs and transaction-level testbenches employing advanced verification methodologies, including languages such as SystemC and SystemC Verilog.


		Erwin De Kock, Principle Engineer System Design Methodology NXP uses and extends the IP-XACT specification to implement an ESL to RTL IC design flow. While using IP-XACT for RTL design today, the company’s goal contributes within The SPIRIT Consortium to extend the RTL design flow up to ESL abstraction including virtual prototyping. At DAC 2007, NXP demonstrated multi-vendor tool integration to show current capabilities for RTL design using IP-XACT as well as some early capabilities enabled by upcoming features of IP-XACT with ESL Extensions.


		Colin Tattersall, VP Sales and Marketing Scarlet's Component Foundry is a low-cost IP-XACT component creation tool, which will create IP-XACT descriptions straight from legacy IP, parsing information straight from RTL files and PDF documents, creating IP-XACT files in seconds. The intuitive GUI and semantic checker offer easy and accurate editing of IP-XACT components. No knowledge of XML is required, and wizards are available where user input is required. The tool intelligently highlights missing files and data.


		John Sawnson, Senior Manager, Solutions Group AT DAC 2007, Synopsys demonstrated the industry-leading DesignWare Cores in coreAssembler with its open API, native interfaces to the Galaxy™ and Discovery™ Platforms empowering an IP-XACT design flow. This flow is proven to speed IP integration and verification while achieving predictable success with significant design time reduction. The demo showed the creation of an AMBA® 3 IP-Subsystem containing DesignWare® Cores and verified with the AMBA 3 Assured Verification IP.