May 16, 2012 -- Carbon Design Systems, Inc. today introduced the Carbon Performance Analysis Kit (CPAK) family for accelerating the analysis, optimization and verification of system-on-chip (SOC) performance. CPAKs enable architects and engineers to begin analyzing performance and power within hours of installation, and months before tape-out, reducing overall time-to-market pressures and minimizing the risk of a complete re-design. They can be customized using models from Carbon's IP Exchange model portal, SystemC or Carbon Model Studio.

The CPAK family for ARM Cortex A-Series processors contains reference hardware and software designs along with analysis and debug software for the Cortex-A9, Cortex-A15 and Cortex-A7 cores, and the ARM big.LITTLE subsystem. It comes pre-configured with bare-metal initialization software, Linux or Android OS for analyzing, optimizing and verifying performance and power. In addition, the CPAK Family is pre-configured with the multicore task-migration software layer between the big.LITTLE processing cluster, which includes ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore and Cortex-A7 MPCore processors, and the client OS.

"Designers often attempt to use 85% to 90% cycle-accurate solutions that they claim are good enough for system analysis," comments Joe Tatham, Carbon's Vice President of Engineering. "What typically happens, though, is that model is only 50% to 60% accurate for certain areas. Designers are making multi-million dollar decisions based upon data that's about as accurate as the flip of a coin. Carbon offers 100% cycle-accurate models, where design teams can guarantee performance results will match the final silicon, minimizing the risk of a re-design."

Availability

The CPAK Family for ARM Cortex Processors will be available in bare-metal and Linux configurations in the second quarter of calendar year 2012, and in Android configurations in the second half of calendar 2012.

Carbon will demonstrate the CPAK for ARM big.LITTLE at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco's Moscone Center June 4-6. Carbon will exhibit and offer presentations in the ARM Connected Community Pavilion, Booth #802.