Accellera forms CDC working group and takes security standard to IEEE

Accellera Systems Initiative has formed the working group for a possible standard for exchanging intent information for clock-domain crossing (CDC) and has also passed its security-annotation standard to the IEEE for use in the P3164 draft standard.

The charter of the new working group is to define a standard CDC collateral specification to ease SoC integration.

Dammy Olopade, CDC working-group chair said the aim is to capture in a standard format design intent for issues that might trigger CDC, reset domain crossing and glitch errors in tools. “This will enable interoperability of CDC collateral generated by different CDC verification tools. We have been meeting as a proposed working group since September, and there has already been tremendous industry support. During the upcoming working group meetings, we will focus on the effort to produce a normative language reference manual.”

The problem Accellera hopes to help solve is the incompatibility between different CDC and glitch-prediction tools through the SoC flow. CDC verification problems crop up when the SoC teams source IP from IP providers that use a different tool for their own CDC verification. To perform holistic SoC-level verification, additional resources are needed to reconverge the IP with the verification tool used by the SoC team.

In the security arena, the Security Annotation for Electronic Design Integration (SA-EDI) version 1.0 standard will form part of the discussions of the IEEE P3164 group, which is holding a kickoff meeting on February 14. Developed by Accellera’s IP Security Assurance (IPSA) working group, SA-EDI 1.0 defines a specification that documents security concerns for hardware IP and its associated components when integrated into an integrated circuit (IC).

“SA-EDI 1.0 has been in the hands of the community for over a year and has already helped a number of providers in their quest to identify security issues,” stated Brent Sherman, IPSA working group chair. “We look forward to the continued work within the IEEE P3164 Working Group to continue to advance the standard.”

Sherman will begin his new role as Chair of the IEEE P3164 working group at the first meeting next month.