NEWS BRIEFS
San Jose, CA — iMODL, a supplier of models and tools for the functional verification of complex ICs (Integrated Circuits) and electronic systems, today announced that Hitachi, Ltd.’s Enterprise Server Division (ESD) chose iMODL’s iValidate functional verification toolset for its industry-leading eight-way server design – reportedly the fastest Profusion(-based chipset in the industry. This decision follows on the success of another Hitachi division that used iValidate for a similar verification process.
Hitachi’s eight-way server design presented a formidable verification challenge. At the heart of the design is a five port non-blocking buffered bus switch which is implemented in two large ASICs – each over a million gates and each over 500 pins. iValidate was used for the functional verification of this design. The result was first pass functional silicon, which enabled Hitachi, Ltd. to be first to market with an eight-way Intel Profusion-based server and thereby win several early accounts.
Current users of Hitachi eight-way servers include CityofBoston.com and Embark.com, which are using Hitachi eight-way technology to facilitate e-transaction processing from their burgeoning Web sites. Several other companies such as Microsoft and Oracle are leveraging Hitachi’s Profusion-based servers to run a variety of business-critical applications. The servers are currently marketed by Hitachi Data Systems in the U.S. as Hitachi VisionBase(tm) 8880Rs and VisionBase 8890Rs, and as HA8000/380s by Hitachi, Ltd. in Japan.
“The complete solution offered by iMODL allowed us to easily create a system level verification environment with multiple Pentium III Xeon processors and PCI bus interfaces,” said Shigemi Adachi, department manager of Hitachi, Ltd.’s PC Server Development Department. “The automatic checking coupled with easy controllability and traceability helped us to achieve first silicon with no functional errors.”
Masahiro Kitano, department manager for Hitachi, Ltd.’s Server Development Department, said, “On our next generation servers we want to achieve very high functional verification coverage. iValidate provides a complete environment with automatic functional test generation and self-checking capability for each interface. This will allow us to validate concurrent conflicting transactions from multiple sources.”
For more information visit http://www.hds.com or http://www.imodl.com
============================================================