EVE/ZeBu is a provider of hardware-assisted verification tools for

functional verification In electronic design automation, functional verification is the task of verifying that the logic design conforms to specification. Functional verification attempts to answer the question "Does this proposed design do what is intended?" This is a ...

Application-specific integrated circuits An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-effici ...

(ASICs) and

system on chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memor ...

(SOC) designs and for validation of

embedded software Embedded software is computer software, written to control machines or devices that are not typically thought of as computers, commonly known as embedded systems. It is typically specialized for the particular hardware that it runs on and has time ...

(

software driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and ot ...

Operating System An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

and

Application software Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

) ahead of implementation in

silicon Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. It is a hard, brittle crystalline solid with a blue-grey metallic luster, and is a tetravalent metalloid and semiconductor. It is a member of group 14 in the periodic ...

. EVE's

hardware acceleration Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calc ...

and

hardware emulation In integrated circuit design, hardware emulation is the process of imitating the behavior of one or more pieces of hardware (typically a system under design) with another piece of hardware, typically a special purpose emulation system. The emu ...

products work in conjunction with

Verilog Verilog, standardized as IEEE 1364, is a hardware description language (HDL) used to model electronic systems. It is most commonly used in the design and verification of digital circuits at the register-transfer level of abstraction. It is a ...

SystemVerilog SystemVerilog, standardized as IEEE 1800, is a hardware description and hardware verification language used to model, design, simulate, test and implement electronic systems. SystemVerilog is based on Verilog and some extensions, and since 20 ...

, and

VHDL The VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) is a hardware description language (HDL) that can model the behavior and structure of digital systems at multiple levels of abstraction, ranging from the system level down to that of logic gat ...

-based

simulators A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the s ...

from

Synopsys Synopsys is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical desig ...

Cadence Design Systems Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence), headquartered in San Jose, California, is an American multinational computational software company, founded in 1988 by the merger of SDA Systems and ECAD, Inc. The company produces software, ...

and

Mentor Graphics Siemens EDA is a US-based electronic design automation (EDA) multinational corporation for electrical engineering and electronics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded in 1981 as Mentor Graphics, the company was acquired by Siemens ...

. EVE's flagship product is ZeBu.

History

In 2000, EVE was founded in France. In 2002, EVE launched its flagship ZeBu's first emulation product and SystemC support. In May 2006, EVE introduced a communication link to

simulation, SystemVerilog assertion support, and a

register transfer level In digital circuit design, register-transfer level (RTL) is a design abstraction which models a synchronous digital circuit in terms of the flow of digital signals (data) between hardware registers, and the logical operations performed on those ...

compiler for mapping an

ASIC An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-effici ...

System-on-a-chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memor ...

(SOC) design into ZeBu's arrays of

FPGA A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term ''Field-programmability, field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specifi ...

s. In January 2007, EVE acquired Tharas, a

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

-based hardware acceleration systems supplier. In July 2009, EVE announced their ZeBu-Server emulator could handle one billion

logic gates A logic gate is an idealized or physical device implementing a Boolean function, a logical operation performed on one or more binary inputs that produces a single binary output. Depending on the context, the term may refer to an ideal logic gate ...

. In October 2012, EVE was acquired by Synopsys.

Management team

*Luc Burgun - CEO President and CTO, Co-founder *Ludovic Larzul - Engineering VP, Co-founder *Lauro Rizzatti - EVE-USA General Manager and WW Marketing VP *William Addi - Chief Financial Officer *Ron Burns - Sales VP *Christophe Ballan - Operations VP

Products

EVE has a ZeBu family of hardware acceleration and FPGA-based hardware emulation products, which EVE claims has design capacity scalable from 10M to 1B ASIC gates and a top speed of 30 MHz.

Features

The ZeBu emulator supports operational modes for

hardware description language In computer engineering, a hardware description language (HDL) is a specialized computer language used to describe the structure and behavior of electronic circuits, and most commonly, digital logic circuits. A hardware description language e ...

(HDL) acceleration,

ANSI C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

/ SystemC/

transaction-based co-emulation, where the

testbench A test bench or testing workbench is an environment used to verify the correctness or soundness of a design or model. The term has its roots in the testing of electronic devices, where an engineer would sit at a lab bench with tools for measurem ...

described at high-level of abstraction drives the design mapped in ZeBu via

communication protocol A communication protocol is a system of rules that allows two or more entities of a communications system to transmit information via any kind of variation of a physical quantity. The protocol defines the rules, syntax, semantics and synchroniza ...

interfaces called transactors, and an

in-circuit emulator In-circuit emulation (ICE) is the use of a hardware device or in-circuit emulator used to debug the software of an embedded system. It operates by using a processor with the additional ability to support debugging operations, as well as to ca ...

mode. The ZeBu compiler does automation

chip Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a type of immunoprecipitation experimental technique used to investigate the interaction between proteins and DNA in the cell. It aims to determine whether specific proteins are associated with specific genom ...

division, where one SoC is divided into multiple FPGAs based on user specified

parameters A parameter (), generally, is any characteristic that can help in defining or classifying a particular system (meaning an event, project, object, situation, etc.). That is, a parameter is an element of a system that is useful, or critical, when ...

for input file paths, such as

EDIF EDIF (Electronic Design Interchange Format) is a vendor-neutral format based on S-Expressions in which to store Electronic netlists and schematics. It was one of the first attempts to establish a neutral data exchange format for the electronic desig ...

Netlist In electronic design, a netlist is a description of the connectivity of an electronic circuit. In its simplest form, a netlist consists of a list of the electronic components in a circuit and a list of the nodes they are connected to. A netwo ...

, number of FPGAs the ZeBu board has, and the number of

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

s used for compilation. ZeBu has static, dynamic and flexible probes for retrieving and depositing

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...

. Static and flexible probes are created during

compilation Compilation may refer to: *In computer programming, the translation of source code into object code by a compiler **Compilation error **Compilation unit *Product bundling, a marketing strategy used to sell multiple products *Compilation thesis M ...

, with speeds exceeding 10 MHz. Dynamic probes do not require compilation, and slow down the execution speed of the emulator to few kilohertz. ZeBu can be used by up to 25 multiple concurrent users.

References

External links