CDNLive EMEA: Cadence brings IEEE 1801 into simulation update

Cadence Design Systems has decided to embrace the IEEE1801 standard, derived from the Unified Power Format (UPF), providing support alongside the Common Power Format (CPF) originally developed by the EDA vendor and now maintained by the Silicon Integration Initiative.

Pankaj Mayor, vice president of marketing, said: “We are offering support for new enhancements for CPF and also for the first time support for IEEE1801. We are offering the ability for customers to use any power format they want.”

Although the support of both CPF and UPF will make it easier for Cadence customers to migrate to IEEE1801, the company is not expecting any sudden changes among its user base away from CPF.

Adam Sherer, Cadence marketing director, added: “With the 2013 update to IEEE1801, there are features coming in that exist in CPF already. Customers are saying they will make that decision when there is broad support for those new features.

“We are seeing customers begin from move from UPF version 1.0 to the 2009 version of the IEEE standard because it offers additional features and also because it is an IEEE standard,” Sherer added.

Support for UPF has been added to the Incisive Enterprise simulator, which has also received updates aimed at reducing the time it takes to debug power-related problems. Rather than treating power-aware debug as a post-process activity, Cadence has implemented interactive debugging as well as graphical visualization of which parts of an SoC are powered down as the simulation runs.

“Interactive debug reduces the number of simulations you need to run to find bugs,” said Sherer.