Expertise in emulation being brought to bear

It has been announced that Synopsys was selected by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the Posh Open Source Hardware (POSH) program to create new innovation in analog mixed signal verification as part of its Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI), in partnership with Lockheed Martin and Analog Devices, using Synopsys’ ZeBu emulation technology.

ERI is a multi-year program designed to nurture research in advanced new materials, circuit design tools, and system architectures. In support of the POSH program, Synopsys will seek to develop critical signoff-quality emulation technology for mixed signal system-on-chips (SoCs) to enable faster time-to-market and improved quality of mixed-signal SoC designs for aerospace and defense applications.

A press release issued by DARPA on June 26, 2018, stated: “The agency has helped grow and integrate communities across the electronics ecosystem for decades and will continue that mission with ERI. ERI will address targeted applications for specialized, next-generation hardware, specifically artificial intelligence (AI), hardware security, hardware emulation, and photonics.”

To meet the program’s goals, Synopsys’ ZeBu Server emulation technology will serve as a foundation to host a converged solution for verifying digital and analog IP and SoCs achieving up to 100X performance increase compared to simulation. With its high performance, capacity, scalability, and support for standard-based connectivity protocols, ZeBu Server enables full system verification of ultra-complex mixed-signal SoCs.

Chris Tice, Vice President, Verification Continuum solutions in Synopsys’ Verification Group, added: “We are collaborating with leading semiconductor manufacturers and defense contractors to innovate a novel implementation of analog and mixed-signal acceleration in an emulation environment. We look forward to supporting ERI and expanding the emulation use cases while enabling faster time-to-market for mixed-signal SoCs.”