Date: 19/09/2011

Mentor Graphics expands Vista ESL Platform integrated with Catapult C

Mentor Graphics Corporation has expanded the Vista ESL Platform integration with Catapult C, sharing common TLM modeling style for Virtual prototyping and HLS-based hardware implementation, has been strengthened with the Mentor partnership with Calypto.

Mentor Graphics explains that the Vista ESL platform is the center point of the Mentor comprehensive ESL strategy, a strategy that has extended the boundaries of ESL technologies by addressing a broad range of electronic system design, virtual prototyping, hardware realization, software realization, and TLM-to-RTL verification and model reuse challenge.

The Vista ESL platform provides the capability to create a Virtual Prototype derived from the Virtual TLM Platform that retains its key hardware attributes that can be used for firmware testing, operating system integration and hardware-dependent application development, which are software binary compatible, scalable level of abstraction allows very fast simulation speed for software validation, and allows switching to more accurate Approximately Timed (AT) simulation during run time for software performance and power optimization of the system, as per Mentor Graphics.

According to Mentor Graphics, for hardware implementation, the Vista ESL platform's tight integration with the Calypto Catapult C high-level synthesis tool results in a complete TLM 2.0-based hardware implementation solution, which allows users to share a single and consistent TLM modeling style. The Calypto TLM synthesis flow supports converting abstract TLM models to pin-accurate, protocol-specific, SystemC models, and from there, to synthesized to RTL code. Conversely, the synthesized TLMs can be used in the Vista Virtual Platform for architectural optimization of performance and power, and in the Vista Virtual Prototypes for early software development.

"Mentor has a long track record of leading the quickly growing ESL market, and we plan to continue on this path far into the future," said Walden C. Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor Graphics. "Expanding the Vista Virtual Prototyping capability for early software development-combined with integration between Vista Virtual Prototyping and Sourcery CodeBench embedded software development tools- is only one of the target areas for growth. The newly announced acquisition of Catapult C by Calypto leverages tool integrations that have existed for years, and further extends the Mentor ESL offering into the Calypto ESL hardware realization flow.