3D 3G Wireless Games

Cadence Design Systems announced that the Cadence(R) Palladium(TM) design verification system now has custom interfaces to leading wireless test equipment from Anritsu Corporation, Rohde & Schwarz, and Elektrobit. These companies supply test equipment used by virtually all wireless integrated circuit (IC) and systems companies. Interfacing to wireless testers, combined with Palladium's hardware/software co-verification capability, provides complete system-level verification for the latest 2.5G and 3G handset and base station development, and local-area network (LAN) 802.11 wireless applications.

These new interfaces enable designers to verify and stress test their emulated design with real-world stimulus generated by wireless testers -- a system-level verification task otherwise performed after silicon samples have been produced. These powerful environments help wireless companies bridge the gap between simulation and post-silicon debug and find and fix more bugs earlier in the design process, while also concurrently verifying their software drivers and lower-layer protocol stack at emulation speeds. Overall, these capabilities help reduce design cycle times and the risk of costly silicon respins.

LG Electronics Inc. (LGE) is using Palladium for complete system-level verification of its multimillion-gate, 3G WCDMA base station modem chip. "Using Palladium with various wireless test equipment and software debuggers allows us to do hardware and software testing with real-world channel effects, on our six-million-gate, digital base station chip months before getting silicon samples," said Dr. Chul-Heum Yon, vice president of UMTS System Research Lab, LGE.

"We were able to connect third-party software debuggers to the various processors and run software code 10,000 times faster than simulation. We were also able to save valuable time by quickly finding and fixing bugs in the Palladium environment because of its fast compile time -- 12 minutes, from RTL to run-time, on one workstation."

LGE utilizes a Cadence-proprietary hardware-based streamer solution along with a hardware-based channel simulator from Elektrobit to add necessary channel effects, such as multi-path fading and power attenuation. This allows LGE to speed-up and enhance the quality of the verification.

"By combining the Anritsu MD8480 tester with Palladium and a channel simulator, it's the first time that all 3G W-CDMA hand-set digital baseband developers can check various layer 1-3 parametric and call processing functions while also having the wireless channel subjected to real-world atmospheric conditions well before silicon is ready," said Hiromichi Toda, president, Anritsu Corporation. "This capability accelerates the verification process and enables developers to speed time-to-market."

As the leading provider of verification solutions to the wireless industry, Cadence has developed an 802.11 wireless LAN solution based on a tester from Rohde & Schwarz. This test environment allows users to verify their wireless LAN chip running in the Palladium system 10,000 times faster than simulation and test protocol compliance.

"Working with leading test equipment companies allows Cadence to continue to accelerate our customers' design cycle and improve the quality of their products," said Christopher Tice, Cadence senior vice president and general manager, Verification Acceleration. "In an aggressive marketplace like wireless and wireless LAN, where nanometer technologies are driving capacities of one million to tens of millions of gates, Palladium becomes a necessary component for high-performance and early system-level verification."

The core components of the wireless verification environment consist of Palladium, the Elektrobit PROPSim DBB or C2 channel simulator, and one of the following testers: the Anritsu MD8480A; the Rohde & Schwarz WinIQSim/AMIQ; and the Cadence Mobile Station Tester. Customers may purchase these components from the respective companies.