1. Emulator: a technology with a long history and continuous improvement
As an important part of electronic design automation (EDA) tools, hardware simulators have gone through multiple stages of development since their birth 40 years ago. Its maturity is closely related to the rise of the integrated circuit industry, and as technology continues to evolve, the application and performance of hardware emulators are also constantly improving. Dr. T.C. Lin's wonderful speech not only told the development history of hardware emulators, but also discussed the evolution of Emulation technology in depth. From the birth of FPGA chips in the 1980s to modern times, hardware simulators have become an indispensable tool for circuit design and verification. During this development process, the hardware emulator has solved a series of complex problems such as the construction of multiple FPGA chips, the design of large-scale FPGA arrays, and data exchange, giving it unique advantages in terms of capacity, performance, and debugability.
2. Technical advantages and contemporary definitions of hardware emulators
With the development of technology, modern hardware simulators can already support the simulation requirements of ultra-large-scale designs, such as tens of billions of gate-level design capacity. This large-capacity support enables the hardware emulator to handle the verification needs of Apple M1 Pro processors, NVIDIA GPU chips, and a variety of other mainstream SoC and Chiplet chip designs. For a modern Emulator, it must have advanced debugging capabilities, strong design capacity, and compatibility with various test acceleration support such as System Verilog/UVM Simulation, C++, Python and other languages. In addition, the hardware emulator also needs to support collaborative verification of software and hardware, virtualization test interfaces, and estimation and analysis of system power consumption.
3. Diversified usage modes and application scenarios of hardware emulators
There are various usage modes of hardware emulators, from the original ICE mode to the modern TBA accelerated simulation mode and Hybrid simulation mode. These different modes enable the hardware emulator to work efficiently in various complex verification environments. ICE mode is popular for its ability to inject real-world test stimuli into the device under test at high speeds. TBA accelerated simulation mode and Hybrid simulation mode provide more flexible and rich debugging methods and better compatibility. In addition, modern hardware simulators also support advanced functions such as assertions, coverage analysis, and DPI-C-based TLM extension interfaces, providing engineers with a comprehensive high-speed simulation verification solution.
4. Continuous innovation and development of hardware emulators
As a complex system integrating software tool chain and hardware platform, the hardware emulator is extremely difficult to design and develop. At present, there are not many companies that can provide complete simulation solutions, mainly concentrated in the three EDA giants Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA in the United States. However, domestic EDA manufacturers such as Xin Huazhang are also constantly catching up and innovating, launching HuaEmu E1, a tens-billion-level hardware emulator with international standards. These innovative products not only possess all the advantages of traditional emulators, but also innovate in aspects such as multi-user support, data channel isolation, and cloud service models, reflecting the continuous progress and development of hardware emulation technology.