Accellera attempts to standardize CDC data
Accellera Systems Initiative has moved onto the first stage of setting up a working group to create a standard for exchanging information on clock domain crossing (CDC) checks to ease the job of integrating IP into SoCs.
The problem today with CDC is the incompatibility of data between tools from different vendors that might be used at various stages of IP development and SoC integration: the chief issue being that IP created by one team or vendor uses a different tool to the one used at integration time. The results they provide cannot currently be used to feed a tool from a different vendor and accessing the RTL itself to perform the checks again may be impossible or impractical due to the added runtimes.
“This is very much a user-driven standard. It is not necessarily something that the vendors like,” Accellera chair Lu Dai told Tech Design Forum.
Martin Barnasconi, Accellera technical committee chair, said, “Based on the level of interest and commitment from the community, the proposed working group will determine if a standard is needed to enable the interoperability of CDC collateral generated by different CDC verification tools to ease integration.”
Dai said the likely path will be to develop a vendor-neutral or extracted model that can be used for data exchange. Encrypting RTL or some derivative for use in the customer’s tool would likely present problems. “The SoC person might not be comfortable with using this: they want to be able to see the details.”
The first proposed working group meeting will be held Tuesday, September 13th from 9am – 4pm PT at Intel’s SC12 office in Santa Clara. Participants in the proposed working group need not be from Accellera member companies. As well as Intel, companies that have already shown interest in participating in the kick-off meeting include Arm, Cadence, Qualcomm, Nvidia, NXP, STMicroelectronics, and Siemens. The group will collect requirements, identify technical feasibility, identify industry interest and acceptance, and provide a recommendation to start or not start a working group.
