NEW YORK-Mentor Graphics Corp. plans this summer to begin selling a new generation of electronic design automation software, developed with Nokia Corp., that officials of both companies say will dramatically speed time to market for new electronics products.
Known as Seamless Co-Verification Environment, the new software permits virtual reality troubleshooting of prototype designs, instead of testing actual physical prototypes. Problems can be worked out faster and earlier in the development process, when changes are less costly to make.
“The biggest problems are at the lowest level, in the area where the software drives the hardware,” said Stuart Ross, research and development manager for broadband processing at Nokia Mobile Phones, San Diego.
In the three seconds it takes just to turn on and ready for use a Nokia 9000 Communicator-a wireless combination of phone, fax, e-mail, Internet connection, notepad and address book-microprocessors inside have executed between 10 million and 20 million instructions, according to Mitch Weaver, co-design business unit manager for Mentor Graphics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Ore.
To test only those first three seconds using conventional methods takes about 11 days of traditional simulation time. By comparison, Seamless CVE can reduce the total prototype testing for new electronics equipment from two months to less than one day, Weaver said.
The cost is $75,000 for the basic “kernel” software, plus extra charges for customization models that make it work for individual product prototypes, he said.
Short product life cycles, the drive toward miniaturization, increasing internal complexity, the commoditization of wireless handsets and resulting downward pressure on their prices, all contribute to an urgent need for faster prototype testing, according to Ross.
Nokia already has used Mentor’s Seamless CVA in its base stations and plans to use it when it develops a new handset during the fourth quarter of this year, Ross said. In exchange for participating in the development of Seamless CVA, Nokia gets exclusive rights to use it until it is offered to the public this summer.
“The performance gains are anywhere from 50 times to 3,000 times depending on different levels of optimization for verification,” Ross said.
Weaver said Mentor had also worked with other “industrial partners” on development of its Seamless CVA, but that Nokia was its primary participant.
“Why Nokia? Why telecom? Telecommunications today are driving very innovative design methodologies. They are pushing the envelope in these embedded systems,” Weaver said.
