Axis Systems plans to introduce a new class of design verification tool later this year. The company's product incorporates verification software and ReConfigurable Computing (RCC) hardware to improve simulation and verification throughput for 1 million plus gate designs. The new methodology promises designers improved simulation performance and offers debugging options not found with any current verification technology.

According to Dr. Mike Tsai, Axis founder, president and CEO, "The design productivity gap between silicon capabilities and today's current verification solutions -- simulation, emulation and acceleration -- continues to widen. Our goal is to address this gap. We plan to introduce verification technology that is superior to simulation and offers an improved price/performance ratio over emulation or acceleration technology."

Tsai added, "Our solution is a complete logic verification system operating at performance of 10,000-100,000 cycles/second with full simulation interaction. We are targeting software and hardware designers who need to fully verify their design before committing to silicon. Our tools and technology fit with current verification and design flows."

"Strong technology partnerships with both Altera and Sun Microsystems have helped us develop a patented RCC engine that offers high performance verification for the EDA market," stated Steven Wang, Axis founder, Vice President of Marketing. (Sun Microsystems, Inc., NASDAQ:SUNW; Altera Corporation, NASDAQ:ALTR)

Axis' Mission Is Addressing the Verification Gap
Simulation is today's proven design verification technology. Because of the increases in design size and complexity, today's simulators cannot completely address performance needs. Axis plans to introduce new technology that includes a combination of software simulation and RCC hardware engine that uses an array of high-density programmable logic. This technology promises to dramatically boost simulation performance by orders of magnitude at a price/performance ratio unmatched by competing solutions.

High-Technology Execs Form Axis
Axis' founders include:

Mike Tsai, Ph.D., President & CEO
Tsai was co-founder and CEO of ArcSys from 1991 through 1994. ArcSys (now Avant!) is currently the technology leader in physical design tools for ICDA and the fourth largest company in the EDA industry. From 1995 to 1996, he was CEO of GWcom, a wireless communication company. After he led the GWcom system design effort, he realized the critical need of design verification. With his EDA background and design expertise, Tsai assembled the Axis founding team to make a major impact in this critical area of design verification. Prior to founding ArcSys in 1991, Tsai held key management positions at Cadence Design Systems, Silicon Compilers, and IBM Yorktown Research Center. With extensive general management experience and a strong yet diversified technical background, Tsai has the vision to build Axis Systems into a great company. Currently, Tsai is also Chairman of Salutron, a medical instrument company, and General Partner of Acorn Venture Partners.

Steven Wang, Vice President of Marketing
Wang co-founded Precedence, a simulation back-plane company, in 1991 and served as vice-president of Engineering. Precedence, the leader for co-simulation, was acquired by Mentor Graphics in 1995. From 1995 to 1996, he was with Zycad as Director of Strategic Business Development in charge of HDL development and products. Prior to founding Precedence, Wang was with Sun Microsystems as key architect of system verification. Since 1995, Wang has served as CFO for EDAC, a trade organization of all EDA companies.

Sharon Lin, Vice President of Hardware
Lin was the Chief Hardware Architect of GWcom. She developed the world's most advanced two-way paging system. Prior to GWcom, she was co-founder and President of Pagine, which produced X terminals. Prior to founding Pagine, she was the Chief Architect of Wyse Technology. At Wyse, she designed six models of Wyse terminals and made Wyse the market leader in terminals. With over 20 years of experience, she has delivered numerous successful high-volume hardware systems to the market.

Ren-Song Tsay, Ph.D., Vice President of Software
Tsay was a founding engineer and the Chief Architect of Avant!. Based on his patent, Avant!'s timing-driven place and route product is the most advanced place and route package on the market. Prior to Avant!, he was the key architect of IBM place and route tools. Tsay is a world renowned algorithm expert who has produced highly sophisticated software packages. In addition, Ping Tseng, Ph.D., an expert on parallel computation has joined the company as Director of Simulation. Tseng was the Chief Architect of Synopsys cycle-based VHDL simulator Cyclone. He is also world expert of parallel computation. With experience of simulation and parallel computing, Ping is uniquely qualified to develop event-based simulator on RCC. Prior to joining Synopsys, Tseng was principal engineer at HP and Bell Core.

RCC and its Benefit
Axis' ReConfigurable Computing (RCC) engine is based on a massively parallel architecture for which compute intensive tasks are mapped onto hundred of thousands of reconfigurable computing elements. Reconfigurable elements are custom processors designed for one single task. Communication between processing elements is done with a systolic array structure which allows data transfer between nearest neighbors. Computational efficiency derives from the ability to custom build and use the best RCC element for a particular function. For compactness and high performance operation, the RCC engine resides within Sun Microsystems workstation(s) with direct connection to its PCI backplane.

Design verification with RCC fits directly into the user's environment without modification. Whether the design is described at the Verilog behavioral, RTL or gate level, Axis' RCC compiler transparently maps the design onto RCC computing elements and provides the necessary software interface for interactive debugging. Thus, RCC technology looks, acts, and feels like a software simulator but at hardware speed.

Simulation-based verification is a methodology that is running out of steam. One of the alternate verification approaches is emulation. Aside from increased speed of use, emulation also provides a platform and methodology for the concurrent of development of the associated software.

The announcements from Altera and Axis Systems cover a new PLD-based verification system approach. The system is now in beta test and is not expected to be available until later this year. Although Axis has not yet provided details of their system, it seems that its RCC engine will compete will FPGA-based emulation systems from Quickturn Design Systems and Aptix.