Arm Expands Cycle Model Portfolio with Support for SystemC

EDA collaborations to broaden adoption and enable faster development

Cambridge, UK, Jun. 02, 2016 – Arm announced today the availability of cycle-accurate models of Arm processor and system intellectual property (IP) with support for industry standard SystemC. Previously only available for use in Arm SoC Designer, Arm Cycle Models now integrate with SystemC environments including commercial offerings from Cadence and Synopsys, enabling partners to begin their system design and prototyping earlier using a wide range of popular development environments.

"Early SoC architectural exploration and performance estimation have become essential to meet the industry's ever increasing demands on performance," said Javier Orensanz, general manager, development solutions group, Arm. "I am very pleased to extend our collaboration with our EDA partners to include Cycle Models, and together enable the success of the next generation of Arm-powered devices."

Arm Cycle Models have already been used successfully in multiple SystemC virtual prototypes including an automotive SoC design featuring an Arm Cortex-A53 and Cortex-M7, and a 5G baseband SoC that incorporates a Cortex-R8. In addition, all future Cycle Models will be released with SystemC support.

Broadening Ecosystem Adoption

"Integrating Arm Cycle Models with the Cadence Interconnect Workbench enables more efficient early SoC performance analysis and optimization," said Mike Stellfox, fellow, System & Verification Group at Cadence. "Through our collaboration with Arm, users can simply download a Cycle Model from the Arm IP Exchange and quickly verify system performance goals when simulating using the Incisive Enterprise Simulator or in hybrid mode with the Palladium Z1 enterprise emulation platform."

"The ability to run application workloads on cycle-accurate processor models is important to the validation of multicore SoC designs," said John Koeter, vice president of marketing for IP and prototyping at Synopsys. "The integration of Arm Cycle Models with Synopsys Platform Architect™ MCO's architecture analysis tool enables our customers to confirm their architecture design decisions earlier in the development cycle."

Arm Cycle Models provide both pin-level and TLM-2.0 interfaces to enable integration into a variety of environments. Arm's IP Exchange portal (www.armipexchange.com) will be used to configure and compile future SystemC models, ensuring around-the-clock availability.

Select Arm Cycle Models with SystemC support are available today, including Cortex-M7, Cortex-A53 and Cortex-R8, with new models being added regularly.

About Arm

Arm (LSE: Arm, NASDAQ: ArmH) designs technology at the heart of the world's most advanced digital products. We are enabling the development of new markets and transformation of industries and society, invisibly creating opportunity for a globally connected population. Our scalable, energy-efficient processor designs and related technologies deliver intelligence wherever computing happens, ranging from sensors to servers, including smartphones, tablets, digital TVs, enterprise infrastructure and the Internet of Things.

Our innovative technology is licensed by Arm Partners who have shipped more than 86 billion System on Chip (SoCs) containing our intellectual property. Together with our Connected Community, we are breaking down barriers to innovation for developers, designers and engineers, ensuring a fast, reliable route to market for leading electronics companies. Learn more and join the conversation at http://community.arm.com.

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