Monday, December 15, 2008

Mentor Graphics Unveils New Hardware Emulator

Wilsonville, Oregon-based Mentor Graphics, which develops software and hardware for the semiconductor EDA market, said this morning that it has rolled out a new hardware emulator which it claims is the industry's largest. The device--which is used by semiconductor design teams to prototype and test their designs--handles up to 512 million gates. The firm said the new Veloce Maximus system is targeted at the most complex Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC) designs. Hardware emulators are used to implement circuitry in high speed hardware, which allows for drastically faster functional verification testing than traditional software. Hardware emulators are also used for in-circuit emulation (ICE) -- where the device can simulate a physical ASIC chip in a real circuit board, albeit at reduced speeds from normal operation. Pricing on the new system was not disclosed, although hardware emulators typically retail for millions of dollars.