The future technological innovation trend of integrated circuits will show trends such as shrinking process size, increasing chip scale, high energy efficiency and agility, and the "EDA + design methodology" integrated circuit design agility is becoming an important means in the post-Moore era. With the blossoming of application fields, the leading companies of system applications have returned to chips from application software to create different architectures to meet their own applications. In the post-Moore era, the computing performance is weak by increasing transistor density, and more heterogeneous integration methods are needed to implement SoCs in the future, in this case, DSA (Domain Specific Architecture) is emerging. At the 2024 International Integrated Circuit Exhibition & Symposium, ChipEasy unveiled its EDA platform FARMStudio. It is reported that Xinyihui is an EDA company based in China that provides the world's leading DSA processor design tools, providing a one-stop tool platform and services for DSA design, analysis, optimization and verification, and automatically generating the best matching software and hardware collaboration solutions for rich application scenarios.
Source: Xinyihui
According to the data, FARMStudio, as an EDA platform that automatically generates dedicated processors, has the following advantages: 1. The world's first. Based on C language, describe the processor generation method of DSA custom instructions as design input;2. Agile design. On the basis of the RISC-V instruction set ecology, DSA processors and supporting tool chains are automatically generated in minutes, and 3. Multi-level verification. A multi-level verification platform based on X86, emulator, RTL, FPGA, and formal verification;4. Optimal PPA. Highly automated, highly customized, to achieve the best PPA. "FARMStudio not only generates the processor IP hardware itself, but like all IP providers, our software directly generates a complete IP implementation, including RTL, implementation and verification environment scripts, as well as supporting tool chains, debuggers, emulators and analyzers, as well as corresponding software development kits and SDKs and embedded custom OS," said Zhang Weihang, vice president of software R&D at Xinyihui. Therefore, the optimal PPA that FARMStudio can achieve is not only the PPA of the processor itself, but also the complete supporting software provided to help users quickly explore the architecture, iterate on software and hardware, and achieve the optimal PPA at the application level. Since the launch of FARMStudio in April 2023, we have received feedback from a large number of users, and FARMStudio V2.0 has iteratively upgraded some new features on the original basis. As an EDA tool, FARMStudio not only provides a processor generation tool, generates processor IP packages, but more importantly, can be extended to the development and debugging functions of the entire application. For an application to be simulated and verified, it first needs to have a golden model, and then the generated hardware needs to be deployed on ISS, RTL, and FPGA, which is very trivial and error-prone for a custom DSA developer. And the end user also needs to verify the results of the operation. Zhang Weihang said: "The whole process can be completed by the FARMStudio platform. As an application developer, you can switch between different DUT platforms at any time to view the behavior of the application between different layers, or you can directly throw the application to this platform and let it directly compare the results on different platforms, and report the performance results of different platforms. The launch of this multi-layered development and validation platform, which will soon be integrated into subsequent versions of FARMStudio, features a fully automated operation and results comparison environment.
Source: Xinyihui
Cloud Virtual FPGA: The function of the cloud virtual FPGA comes from the feedback needs of customers. From the beginning, FARMStudio was a one-stop platform for analysis, verification, and iterative development, and we supported our customers to use native FPGAs for functional verification. However, in the actual project, the customer reported that the configuration and download of the FPGA led to an increase in the workload of the developer and the process was not smooth. Because each company's FPGA is different, developers need to constantly configure and debug to use the local FPGA smoothly. A "cloud FPGA" platform is a strategy to solve this problem once and for all. "Xinyihui has deployed two FPGAs of different sizes that have been adapted to the cloud, which are the small-capacity version and the large-capacity version. Users can connect to the cloud locally and directly penetrate into our computer room for simulation. Such a breakthrough and easy-to-use one-stop software and hardware development platform has been slowly improved. Zhang Weihang introduced.
Source: Xinyihui
As an emerging tool, FARMStudio, a heterogeneous multi-core design verification platform, continues to optimize existing functions and iterate on new features. It is worth mentioning that the heterogeneous multi-core core direct connection module (DIO) of instruction custom calls is a very important feature of FARMStudio's iteration, and has many key technologies. DIO can carry out data transmission between cores, and can also carry out signal communication between cores, coupled with the traditional multi-core connection through the peripheral BUS, forming the basic framework of a multi-core system. In addition, FARMStudio also has a concise and efficient multi-core configuration description scheme, a multi-core function development and verification support system based on X86 C, a multi-core virtual simulator based on FARMC (SystemC based), and an RTL/FPGA verification system that supports the automatic generation and deployment of heterogeneous multi-cores. The new generation of FARMStudio can not only simply describe the generation of a single core, but also an important development direction for heterogeneous multi-core processing in the future.
Source: Xinyihui
It is worth pointing out that domestic EDA manufacturers have basically completed the process of replenishing the chain from 0 to 1 in the past few years, and how to build an independent EDA ecosystem in the future is particularly critical. While establishing close strategic cooperation with wafer foundries, domestic EDA manufacturers also play a vital role in educational cooperation and scientific research project collaboration with colleges and universities. Through these cooperation, we can not only promote the innovation and application of EDA technology, but also cultivate more professional talents, providing a solid foundation for the sustainable development of the domestic EDA industry. Wang Dajun, CEO of Xinyihui, said: "In the next few years, Xinyihui will vigorously lay out ecological construction, part of which is the 'University Plan', and has formulated a series of university training plans to familiarize students and teachers with this set of processor generation methods based on C language to describe DSA custom instructions as design inputs, and cultivate users' understanding of domestic EDA tools from all angles and dimensions. The 'University Program' requires a completely different job for us, the students' minds are more divergent, and the client's goals are very clear, these are two very different markets. With the large-scale deployment of 5G/6G networks and the rise of new AI applications, there is a greater demand for intensive computing in both terminals and the cloud, which not only promotes the rapid development of chip design technology, but also brings new challenges to chip design. The FARMStudio platform can be widely used to customize processor solutions for vision, AI, communications, audio, DPU, industrial control and other fields, helping chip design companies to efficiently develop their own IP and create customized and differentiated products, which will usher in huge opportunities in the post-Moore era.