Verification continues to be one of the most time-consuming and time-critical phases of the design flow. The fixed nature of an ASIC or structured ASIC makes identifying and finding problems on the board prohibitively expensive and massively time-consuming.

HDL verification and timing analysis tools offer a good first line of defense in predicting design behavior, but we believe no design tool offering beats the advantage that the Xilinx® ChipScope™ Pro system brings to FPGA real-time verification.

Faster FPGA Verification
The ChipScope Pro system, available as a separately purchased option to ISE™ software, allows logic and embedded software designers to debug their FPGAs in real time. You can find design problems quickly while the chip is running on the board, interacting with the rest of the system. Then, leveraging the FPGA’s re-programmability, you can implement design changes quickly and send them back to the device on board in a matter of minutes through the FPGA programming cable.

Debug Through Software Cores
The ChipScope Pro package of tools includes software debug cores, Core Inserter, CORE Generator™ software, and the integrated logic analyzer. The ChipScope Pro system is a separate option that plugs in directly to ISE design tools and comes in a 60-day evaluation version.

Four software debug cores are included with ChipScope Pro tools:

• ILA – for accessing and capturing logic signals up to 315 MHz – 50% faster than the previous ChipScope Pro release and among the fastest debug cores available
• IBA – for embedded processor bus signal capture, protocol detection, debugging and verifying control, address, and data buses
• VIO – for setting virtual inputs like external switches, mimicking output devices like LEDs, or for simulating external logic
• ATC2 – the advanced Agilent Technologies Trace Core 2, for linking the ChipScope Pro system to your Agilent logic analyzer and FPGA Dynamic Probe

For engineers designing embedded processor systems using the Virtex™-II Pro or Virtex-4 FX FPGA families, the ChipScope Pro system enables debug of embedded processor buses, including the IBM CoreConnect processor local bus or on-chip peripheral bus supporting the IBM PowerPC™ 405 processor. You can also view and debug embedded processor signals for the MicroBlaze™ soft-processor core, supporting all leading Xilinx FPGA device families.

Signals are captured at or near operating system speed and then brought out through the programming interface, freeing up pins for your design, not gobbling them up for debug. The ChipScope Pro real-time debug tool is one of the only tools that allow you to change probe points without having to resynthesize and re-route your design. Using the ISE FPGA Editor, you can change signal probe points and then quickly reprogram your FPGA and debug a whole new set of signals in a matter of minutes.

Integrated Logic Analysis
You can analyze captured signals through the ChipScope Pro software logic analyzer (Figure 1). The ChipScope Pro logic analyzer is an advanced display and debug tool that makes logic and bus analysis easy. The ChipScope Pro logic analyzer supports multiple window views and bus plotting in either data-versus-time or data-versus-data formats.

Capture mode lets you compare data captured after multiple trigger events; signal filtering lets you ignore data that is not critical to your analysis, saving you memory and time. Using the listing viewer, you can import bus token files and view instructions in the order they occur.

To facilitate processor system debug environments that use software debuggers in addition to ChipScope Pro tools, you can share the JTAG connection to the FPGA with the ChipScope Pro analyzer.

In addition to providing data capture capabilities, the ChipScope Pro system also includes the Virtual I/O console, the interface to one of the industry’s first real-time virtual input/output cores. Through the Virtual I/O console, you can control virtual inputs and pulse trains and view output activity. The ChipScope Pro system now runs on Windows, Solaris, and Linux Red Hat Enterprise 3.

New Capabilities
ChipScope Pro 7.1i software offers new capabilities that take real-time debug to the next level. Leading the way is the new remote debug capability. ChipScope Pro tools can now run in server/client mode over a TCP/IP connection. You can sit in your office while debugging a board next door in the lab or on the other side of the world. You can share a single board/system in the lab with other debug engineers on your team, or allow help desk personnel to debug a problem remotely at a customer site.

The ChipScope Pro system supports the newest low-cost FPGA offering from Xilinx, the Spartan™-3E family.

ChipScope Pro cores have also been performance-enhanced. System debug can now occur at clock speeds greater than 315 MHz, one of the fastest verification cores available. Core Inserter can now be used across multiple netlists from one or more sources, allowing system integrators to debug entire designs rather than one section at a time. ChipScope Pro software also supports the newest Xilinx USB platform programming cable.

Linking to Agilent Logic Analyzers
The ChipScope Pro system also links internal FPGA debug to Agilent Technologies’ bench-top logic analyzers using the included ChipScope Pro ATC2 core. This core synchronizes the ChipScope Pro system to Agilent’s FPGA Dynamic Probe software, an optionally purchased plug-in to your Agilent 1680, 1690, or 16900 logic analyzer.

This unique partnership between Xilinx and Agilent delivers deeper trace memory, faster clock speeds, and more trigger options, all using even fewer pins on the FPGA. The advanced technology contained within the ATC2 core and FPGA Dynamic Probe isn’t available in other FPGA or ASIC real-time verification solutions.

The FPGA Dynamic Probe measures new groups of internal FPGA signals in seconds without forcing you to recompile your design and with no impact on design timing. It achieves wider internal visibility over a fixed number of pins with 64 internal probe points for every pin, helping to conserve FPGA resources for your design. It eliminates error-prone and time-consuming tasks with features like automated signal/bus labeling from FPGA design to logic analyzer, and mapping FPGA pins from board layout to logic analysis channels. Figure 2 shows an example setup using an Agilent logic analyzer, FPGA Dynamic Probe, and ChipScope Pro software in a target system.

ATC2 can support 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, or 64 banks, with each bank supporting from 4 to 128 signal widths. Using optional 2X TDM in state debug mode, signal counts can be doubled, offering as many as 8,192 signals possible for debug in one system. And you can change input banks on the fly using the JTAG programming interface. ATC2 also operates in either state mode, for functional debug in one time domain with the widest signal capture; or timing mode, for making measurements across multiple time domains.

The ATC2 software debug core has also been enhanced for automatic setup, allowing the logic analyzer to automatically find which ATC2/FPGA pins are connected to which logic analyzer pod signals, making setup faster and easier. ATC2 can automatically find the ideal sampling point of each ATC2/FPGA pin in both phase and voltage offset. ATC2 also offers an increased number of multiplexer bank inputs from 32 to 64; and you can now start up your ATC2 debug with a known bank selected.

Conclusion
Nothing in FPGA or ASIC verification approaches what ChipScope Pro tools offer: real-time verification at or near system operating speeds (with a minimum impact on design space and I/O pins) and the ability to capture any signal inside the FPGA while it is running on the board, interacting with the system. Add to that the advantage of FPGA reprogrammability, and you can identify problems and change your design in a matter of minutes or hours, not days or weeks or months using other offerings. To order your ChipScope Pro 7.1i copy today, contact your Xilinx sales representative.

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