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Imperas at Embedded World Exhibition and Conference, March 14-16 2023

Imperas highlights include the latest advances for RISC-V Verification with RISC-V Processor Reference Models and Verification IP plus virtual prototypes for software development.

 

Embedded World 2023

 

Imperas Software Ltd., the leader in RISC-V models and simulation solutions, today announced their participation at Embedded World 2023 in Nuremberg, Germany. Imperas will demonstrate solutions for RISC-V processor verification, software development with virtual prototypes and extensions with custom instructions at the Embedded World Exhibition & Conference 2023, in conjunctions with debug and analysis tools and solutions to accelerate embedded software development.

Imperas are co-sponsors of the RISC-V Pavilion located in Hall 4A stand 4A-620 and will also participate in the following talks during the Embedded World Conference:

 


Conference Paper: Advanced methodologies to address RISC-V verification for all adopters
Abstract
The open standard of RISC-V offers developers new freedoms to explore new design flexibilities and enable innovations with optimized processors. As a design moves from concept to implementation new resources are appearing to help with standards for testbenches, verification IP reuse and coverage analysis. RISC-V offers every SoC team the possibility to design an optimized processor, but this also implies the SoC design verification teams will need to address the challenge and complexity of processor verification. This paper outlines open standards and methodologies that assist in both the efficiency and support for the growing community of RISC-V adopters.
Key aspects include: 
Test Bench integration standards to support SystemVerilog flows based on traditional SoC techniques extended for RISC-V processor design verification.
Coverage methodologies that support the complexities of process design with asynchronous events including interrupts and debug operations, plus hardware configurations including Out-Of-Order pipelines, vector extensions and custom instructions.
Based on examples from several popular open-source cores this talk will provide guidelines that can help both open-source and commercial projects address the RISC-V functional verification challenge.
Speaker:            Jon Taylor – Imperas Software
Co-authors:       Mike Thompson – OpenHW Group
                             Aimee Sutton – Imperas Software
                             Kevin McDermott – Imperas Software
                             Simon Davidmann – Imperas Software
                             Lee Moore – Imperas Software
When:                Wednesday March 15, 2023: Session 9.2 – 2:15pm
 

 

Conference Paper: New ecosystem leads RISC-V mainstream adoption with innovation ready software development and processor verification tools
Abstract
RISC-V is not a processor, it is an open specification that offers the flexibility to build optimized processors. This flexibility, however, is a break from the established norms of processor ecosystems that develop around popular processor hardware and development boards. Traditionally the ecosystem followed after the hardware, and flexibility was not included. The innovation of RISC-V is to reverse this approach and lead with the ecosystem enabled for the envelope of possibilities for RISC-V.
This talk focuses on the main aspects required for adoption of RISC-V: tools and methodology for processor verification and software development. Processor verification flows need to support the flexibility of RISC-V while providing comprehensive DV for dependable quality. Ease of use through standard interfaces and verification IP are critical to successful processor DV. For software, the traditional software development tools followed from the top-down selection process of hardware first and then tools for that fixed target configuration. The new RISC-V software development tools start with the application requirements first and allow developers to explore all potential options now available with RISC-V: custom processor cores, commercial IP providers, open-source projects, and extensions with custom instructions.
The new ecosystem is crossing the traditional boundary of commercial providers, open-source projects, and industry collaborations to support the growing RISC-V community.
Speaker:          Larry Lapides – Imperas Software
Co-authors:     Mike Thompson – OpenHW Group
                           Davide Schiavone – OpenHW Group
                           Kevin McDermott – Imperas Software
                           Simon Davidmann – Imperas Software
When:              Thursday March 16, 2023: Session 9.3 - 12:00pm

 

 

Conference Paper: Example of Extending RISC-V for AI/ML Domain Specific Processors
Abstract
The open standard specification of RISC-V provides the foundation for new approaches to processor design that can be adaptable to address domain specific requirements. To address more complex requirements one approach is to develop multicore processing units than can be optimized for the target workloads. This case study will look at multiprocessor subsystems for AI/ML algorithms for both audio processing and general DSP applications. The design and development of processor IP and multiprocessor systems concurrently offers opportunities to optimize both the hardware and software in parallel, but also requires a new software centric approach to hardware design.
This case study highlights the challenges of verification of custom processor features, development of the multiprocessor communications infrastructure, and software development using full workload analysis to optimize the hardware configurations.
To start the initial software concept development a software simulation approach is used (virtual platform). The starting point is a single CPU model, which is also used for hardware design verification, assembled in a SystemC environment for basic software bring up.
This paper includes a review of the techniques used for verification of the initial RISC-V processor, further extension to the processor subsystem, and multicore software development for real-time audio AI applications.
Speaker:          Larry Lapides – Imperas Software
Co-authors:     Pascal Gouedo – Dolphin Design
                           Damien Le Bars – Dolphin Design
                           Olivier Montfort – Dolphin Design
                           Mike Thompson – OpenHW Group
                           Kevin McDermott – Imperas Software
                           Lee Moore – Imperas Software
                           Aimee Sutton – Imperas Software
When:              Thursday March 16, 2023: Session 9.3 - 4:00pm

 

 

RISC-V Theatre: Introduction to RISC-V Processor Verification
Abstract: The open RISC-V Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) is enabling a wide range of options on the design side, to completement this a number of options can be applied to the verification tasks, since a basic proof of concept prototype may not need all the quality checks as a high volume or high reliability application. This talk will review the 5 different simulation-based DV flows, ranging from simple signature-based comparisons for architectural validation to advanced ‘step-and-compare’ flows that support asynchronous events and debug.
Speaker:          Larry Lapides – Imperas Software
When:              Tuesday March 14, 2023: 10:30am at the RISC-V Booth in Hall 4A stand 4A-620

 

RISC-V Theatre: Getting started with RISC-V custom instructions
Abstract: One of the attractive features of RISC-V is the ability to add, while maintaining ecosystem software support, new optimized instructions and extensions to a processor implementation. At first it appears as simple task to look at opportunities in the application code that could be accelerated with some dedicated new hardware. However, since hardware typically has a much longer life cycle than software, future updates and roadmap needs must be anticipated. Thus, the art of ISA design is using fine grain analysis to accelerate just the key steps while leaving sufficient flexibility to support new software updates and advances. Also, in multi-core arrays the use of custom extension can offer a lightweight communication channel between processors. This extends the scope beyond the processor itself into system design and analysis. This talk will illustrate the key profiling and analysis steps for custom extensions and optimization.
Speaker:            Jon Taylor – Imperas Software
When:                Wednesday March 15, 2023: 10am at the RISC-V Booth in Hall 4A stand 4A-620

 


Exhibits: Visit the RISC-V Pavilion in Hall 4A stand 4A-620 and see all the latest Imperas simulation technology for RISC-V, including advanced RISC-V processor verification, virtual prototypes, software development and custom instruction, plus support for the latest ratified RISC-V specifications including vector accelerators and draft extensions included with the Imperas reference model for RISC-V. For more information, or to set up meetings with Imperas at the Embedded World 2023, please contact info@imperas.com.

 


About Embedded World 2023
When:         March 14-16, 2023.
Where:        Nuremberg Exhibition Centre, Nuremberg, Germany.
Event link:  https://www.embedded-world.de/en

 

 

About Imperas

For more information about Imperas, please see www.imperas.com. Follow Imperas on LinkedIn, twitter @ImperasSoftware and YouTube.

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