SpyGlass CDC

Device Family Support

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Among the many verification challenges confronting system on chip (SoC) designers today, clock domain crossings (CDCs) rank near the top in difficulty. The latest SoCs may have dozens or even hundreds of clock domains, many of them difficult to verify using conventional techniques such as simulation. Detecting these bugs in verification requires long simulation runs and an element of luck. As a consequence, CDCs have become a leading cause of design re-spins. SpyGlass® CDC is the industry's most comprehensive, practical, and powerful CDC verification product. SpyGlass CDC automatically identifies and verifies all synchronization schemes using protocol-independent techniques. Two particularly troublesome CDC-related issues involve FIFO- and handshake-based synchronization mechanisms. Both can be difficult or impossible to accurately verify using simulation. Conventional static CDC analysis tools do too little and too much at the same time, simultaneously overlooking real design errors and over-reporting large numbers of false violations. As a result the user is forced into an endless bug-hunting process, which often leaves the real bugs undetected. The protocol-independent technology that is part of SpyGlass CDC addresses these issues in an easy to use way.

Key Features

• •Automatically recognizes and formally verifies Gray-code logic in re-convergent signals
• •Automatically recognizes complex handshake and FIFO synchronization schemes
• •Formally verifies data stability
• •Formally verifies the functional correctness of synchronization schemes including handshake and FIFO
• •Produces the least amount of false violations
• •Supplemental CDC testing with simulation is not required
• •Supports the widest variety of synchronizers (2-flop, Common-Mux, Mux-Lock, and user-defined synchronizers)
• •Users have the freedom to choose synchronization schemes that work best for them
• •Writing assertions to test CDC signals is not required

Target Markets

• Wired Communications
• Wireless Communications
• Broadcast
• Automotive
• High Performance Computing
• Aerospace & Defense
• Industrial Scientific Medical