Santa Clara, Calif. - CoWare, Inc., and ARM have partnered to provide a new SystemC solution for the configuration of AMBA NIC-301 Network Interconnect-based SoC Designs, which includes CoWare's new SBL-301 SystemC Bus Library for CoWare Platform Architect. CoWare Platform Architect enables early configuration, exploration, and optimization of next-generation system-on-chip (SoC) architectures using AMBA technology-based virtual platforms in SystemC.

The new agreement also enables CoWare direct distribution and support of the ARM AMBA designer ADR-301 tool for AMBA NIC-301 configuration. AMBA NIC-301 Network Interconnect is a highly configurable Fabric IP that allows developers to better meet their performance goals.

Based on CoWare's patented Bus Compiler technology, the new SBL-301 SystemC Bus Library for Platform Architect enables system architects to benefit from the unique capabilities of ARM s AMBA NIC-301 Network Interconnect.

CoWare virtual platforms for architecture design are the virtualized representation of an electronic system used for the purpose of system-level performance analysis and architecture optimization. The CoWare Platform Architect flow provides system architects with the ability to efficiently capture the dynamic performance workloads of each application subsystem of a multi-function SoC in the form of transaction traffic. This can be done months before software is available and with minimum modeling effort using a well-defined, repeatable methodology.

Highlights of the flow resulting from this agreement include fast and accurate SBL-301 SystemC Bus Library that fully models the AMBA NIC-301 Network Interconnect at the transaction-level for architecture exploration and performance optimization; system-level visibility in the Platform Architect graphical environment for AMBA protocol-aware transaction tracing, statistical analysis of interconnect performance at its ports and internally across hierarchical transaction paths, interconnect resource utilization and contention statistics enabling performance measurement of transaction count, transaction throughput, latency, and more.

Platform Architect is configurable across a broad range of AMBA NIC-301 Network Interconnect architectures and parameter settings. Configurations in Platform Architect can be set at run-time, enabling efficient simulation sweeping, data collection, sensitivity analysis, root cause analysis, and the optimization of performance and cost from thousands of candidate architectures. As part of the agreement, CoWare will directly distribute and support the ARM AMBA designer ADR-301 tool for use with Platform Architect. The integration between CoWare Platform Architect and the AMBA designer ADR-301 tool efficiently manages the configuration information for the system-level exploration, uses the configuration checks in AMBA designer ADR-301 tool to validate candidate architectures, and adds the detailed settings in AMBA designer ADR-301 used for RTL verification and implementation.

RTL generation licenses for all AMBA Systems IP, including the AMBA NIC-301 Network Interconnect and Low Power DDR Controllers, are available from ARM.

The new CoWare SBL-301 SystemC Bus Library and architecture design solution featuring CoWare Platform Architect and AMBA designer ADR-301 is available for early customer evaluation today, with production release in December 2009.

For more information visit www.coware.com.