ESL-To-RTL Flow Leans On Abstraction Adaptation

EDA power users moving toward SystemC for architectural exploration must still make the leap to RTL for a cohesive flow. Offering a true mixed-abstraction approach to ESL (electronic system level) design, SpiraTech's Cohesive tools provide a full view of the relationships between system-, transaction-, and wire-level activity.

The flagship product, Cohesive Transformer, embodies an ESL and RTL debugger, a system-level performance profiler, and a multilevel protocol checker. It currently supports the Open Source SystemC simulator and Mentor Graphics' ModelSim RTL simulator. Others will follow in 2004. Its graphical multilevel viewer shows the cause-and-effect and sequence relationships between levels of abstraction. The tool also supports multiple simulators at once, including System C, HDLs, and verification platforms.

A key enabler to the Cohesive flow is what SpiraTech calls its Cohesive Adaptors, which span five levels of abstraction from transaction level down to cycle-accurate level. With them, functional blocks modeled at any level of abstraction can be simulated with blocks modeled at any other level, higher or lower.

The Cohesive Generator captures interface specifications and quickly compiles Cohesive Adaptors for them. SpiraTech and its partners are building a comprehensive library of industry-standard interfaces.

Prices start at $20,000 for Cohesive Transformer, $2000 for Cohesive Adaptors, and $75,000 for Cohesive Generator. All are available now.