Leti, a technology research institute of CEA Tech, and Mentor, a Siemens business, today announced Leti will provide access to the Mentor Veloce emulator to SMEs and startups and will introduce emulation technology to global companies beginning Q3 2017. The Veloce emulator is Mentor’s high-capacity, high-speed, multi-application tool for emulation of system-on chip (SoC) designs that was installed at Leti in 2013.

Emulation is a vital process for more efficient development of complex digital circuits that includes debugging the design at early stages and validating the upstream, onboard software operation.

The Veloce emulator accelerates block and full SoC register-transfer level (RTL) simulations during all phases of the design process, ending the long delay between starting simulations and getting results. It enables pre-silicon testing and debug, can use real-world data, while both hardware and software designs are still fluid.

“Veloce dramatically speeds up the design cycle, because it is 1,000 times faster than traditional RTL simulation tools,” said Thierry Colette, head of Leti’s Architecture, IC Design and Embedded Software division. “It is now possible to verify multi-processor circuits that have several billion transistors – a real competitive advantage that improves return on investment and speeds time to market. But because this powerful tool represents a major investment for microelectronics manufacturers or design houses, Leti is launching this special emulation service to provide our partners direct access to this technology and the benefits it offers.”

“Mentor’s cooperation with CEA-Leti spans a variety of research topics over multiple years,” says Eric Selosse, vice president and general manager of the Mentor Emulation Division. “The intent to proliferate state-of-the-art hardware emulation-based verification methodology to the high technology market is a very attractive goal and we’re proud to contribute to it with our Veloce solutions.”

The Leti offer, which targets European chipmakers, includes Leti’s expert support, such as taking control of device design, optimized implementation within the emulator, debug and analysis of results. Leti also will provide access and support to additional specific tools available in its Grenoble facility, as needed.

To ensure data security, this emulator offer will include:

• a new chassis and cards representing an emulation capacity of 50 Mgates at this stage
  (could be upgrade on demand)
• a dedicated and secure network for customers
• servers dedicated to this offer, connected to a secure network to manage emulation with internal tools.

The network architecture is designed so that Leti partners in this program can remotely view emulation progress or retrieve results.