Zocalo Tech is shipping Zazza software tool with a graphical user interface that provides productivity gains and ease of use over manual instantiation of assertion checkers in IC designs.

Designer-provided assertion checkers enables verification engineer have a common point of reference with the design engineer should a designer-provided checker fail.

Zazz is Linux-based and supports any mix of Verilog 1995, Verilog 2001 and SystemVerilog design files. The Zazz Front End includes an advanced incremental parser, elaborator and design viewer.

An existing design or new design can be read into Zazz where it is parsed, elaborated and graphically displayed. The design may then be modified with the editor of choice without leaving Zazz.

When a design is modified and saved, it is incrementally parsed and elaborated. The incremental feature, along with the built-in modification monitoring updates the graphical display and gives feedback about errors.

Support is provided for Accellera's Open Verification Library (OVL), Cadence's Incisive Assertion Library (IAL), Mentor's Questa Verification Library (QVL) and Synopsys' SystemVerilog Assertions Checker Library with Coverage Level Reporting (SVA _CG).

Zazz is available now. The list price is $4950 for a one-year subscription. Through September 31, 2009, single copies are available at a volume purchase price of $2,950.

Zocalo Tech, Inc. was incorporated in 2006 in Austin, Texas by founders of SpeedGate that provided a tool to partition RTL for FPGA prototyping. SpeedGate was acquired by Mentor Graphics in 2000.