Excellicon Introduces Automated Clock Domain Crossing Tool (CDC) Eliminating Complex Setup Process, Enabling Full Hierarchical for Multi-Mode analysis

By: PRLog

June 02, 2016 at 02:23 AM EDT

LAGUNA HILLS, Calif. - June 2, 2016 - PRLog -- Excellicon Inc., an innovative provider of end-to-end timing constraints products, announced release of its latest product ConDor (Clock Domain Review), providing a fully automated CDC tool. The ConDor CDC product will change the way designers approach the CDC analysis by completely eliminating the setup process and noise that is slowing down designers today by using older technologies. Currently, the setup process that involves defining clocks and clock groups as well as the design mode of operation is difficult, manual, and error prone. The designers are often not fully familiar with all the IPs clocking structure in the design. As a result, the CDC analysis results in very noisy results as designers provide incomplete setup files. This leads to missed clock crossings or not catching them at all due to bad setup. Some products even offer use of SDC as a seed input to the CDC setup process. However the use of manually generated constraints or even older versions of the SDC will again cause many mismatches and lead to noisy results, especially when analyzing a large design with many layers of hierarchy and incomplete SDC for some of the blocks under analysis that are often not properly propagated up or down the hierarchy.

The users of the Excellicon product ConDor perform CDC analysis with ZERO setup as there is no need for any setup file to initiate CDC analysis as all clocks and clock relations are automatically understood by the tool. Complex setup, which bogs down any other CDC analysis tool, can take days and weeks before being completed. Even then the incomplete nature of the setup becomes a source of noise. Additionally, with full hierarchical capabilities inherent to Excellicon products, the ConDor can provide multi-mode and hierarchical CDC analysis with little effort. The users can examine the results in comprehensive reports as well as the graphical user interface provided for abstracted and detailed view of the design. The net result is an easy to run Noiseless CDC tool. Use of ConDor ensures comprehensive CDC analysis, taking into account the interaction of timing and functional sides of the analysis, which will produce ultimate verification of clock crossings in the design.

It is also important to note that Excellicon's automated approach depends on actual data extracted from the design as opposed to legacy timing and often-incomplete constraints or setup separating timing analysis of crossings from functional ones. Manual setup is only as good as the designer's understanding of the underlying design details. The addition of legacy timing constraints files as a seed input for CDC setup also poses a problem when using older and often inaccurate versions of the timing constraints files and analyzing timing and functional sides in isolation. ConDor also addresses a challenging issue regarding multi-mode analysis and propagation of modes from lower to higher blocks. Oftentimes the designers perform only CDC for a single mode to save analysis time, increasing the risk of missed clock crossings. The mode analysis has to be performed by designers manually today for each layer of hierarchy. Excellicon automation solves the complex task of performing such tasks.

"Traditionally the designers have been faced with the complex and unrealistic task of manually coming up with all the design information to perform CDC analysis. This information is readily available in RTL or Netlist files, but difficult and time consuming to harvest without the designer's detailed knowledge of the design. We have leveraged our hierarchical database technology to solve major issues with traditional CDC tools in the market. The first is to eliminate the setup to pave the way for noiseless analysis. Second is abstraction of hierarchical levels to better manage run times and analysis details. Third, clock domain crossing hierarchy handling, which often provides a challenge for the designer propagating information to higher or lower levels of hierarchy. The Fourth issue is the ability to handle multi-mode analysis which is often ignored due to the first two issues," said Himanshu Bhatnagar, Excellicon's CEO.

He also added, "Solving these four challenges faced by a designer also solves one of the biggest hurdles regarding results analysis which is noisy and bad reports. The most important challenge running CDC tools is to catch design errors and not be forced to hunt for a needle in a hay stack or second guess as if the tool is doing the right thing after days or weeks of tedious setup."

Through this offering, Excellicon provides significant productivity gain by automation of simultaneous functional and timing CDC while providing abstraction capabilities for fast hierarchical analysis to a very detailed flat view of the design with respect to Clock Domain Verification.

About Excellicon

Excellicon is an innovative provider of end-to-end Timing Constraints Analysis and Debugging solutions for the automation of constraints authoring, completion, and validation from RTL to GDS with innovative analysis and debugging infrastructures. Excellicon products ConstraintsManager, ConstraintsCerTifier, Exception ToolBox (ET), and ConDor address the needs of designers at every stage of SOC design and implementation in a unified environment. - Timing Closure; Done Once! Done Right!

Contact
Rick Eram
***@excellicon.com
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