June 6, 2011 -- Carbon Design Systems has announced that TSMC has added its SoC Designer Plus to TSMC Reference Flow 12.0 targeting TSMC's most advanced 28-nm process technology. These tools support performance and power analysis at the electronic system level (ESL) and register transfer level, while providing a platform for pre-silicon software development.

"We are pleased to introduce Carbon Design System's SoC Designer Plus to the TMSC Reference Flow 12, a critical component of our 28-nm design infrastructure," said Suk Lee, Director of Design Infrastructure Marketing at TSMC. "The Carbon tools will help our customers make the correct power and performance trade-offs, as well as develop and validate their software, early in the design flow, reducing design cycle time and creating more confidence before going into fabrication."

SoC Designer Plus enables users to create a complete virtual platform for:

Creating and simulating SOC systems representing all of the hardware and software components in the system. Generating and characterizing performance and profile information in a realistic environment running real software. Validating embedded software and firmware against the hardware models. Dynamically swapping between behavioral (LT) and cycle accurate models.

Carbon Model Studio lets users compile RTL designs into high-speed cycle-accurate models that can be used to simulate implementation-accurate behavior for performance characterization and validate embedded software against final implementation.

Combining implementation-accurate models generated from Carbon Model Studio with analysis and profiling capabilities of SoC Designer Plus provides an accurate, system-level platform to characterize performance and power, two vital pieces needed to develop a chip. Understanding these factors early in the design cycle is critical for making the correct trade-offs in the design and architecture of an SoC. In addition, the same platform can be used to develop and validate the project's embedded software enabling the software team to get a head-start on their development.

Using Carbon's Swap & Play technology lets Carbon users develop software on a fast platform and then switch to cycle accuracy at any point when power or performance data is needed.