The product is a system-level modeling and validation environment that allows designers to freely mix data flow models with control blocks at any level of abstraction.

System Studio is the first component of Synopsys' new CoCentric product family — a set of tools and methodologies centered on concurrent development of complex hardware and software systems. It is also the first Synopsys tool supporting the SystemC language, which the company introduced with Open SystemC Initiative partners last September.

The CoCentric System Studio steps beyond its predecessor, the Cossap ES-level tool, which targeted DSP design. With CoCentric System Studio, the company has blended Cossap's dynamic scheduling feature with new technology to create a solution for complex system-on-chip designs, especially those targeting the broadband digital communications, multimedia and networking applications markets.

"Cossap was primarily targeted for DSP but it was somewhat limited if there was a lot of non-DSP functionality in your design," said Joachim Kunkel, vice president and general manager of Synopsys' system-level design business unit. "It wasn't that you couldn't do it but it was a little bit more cumbersome. In System Studio now both control and data flow have become first-class citizens."

Michael Mertz, product line manager of Synopsys' system-level design business unit, said System Studio allows users to bring more complexity into their design and create a more-detailed specification early in the design cycle.

"The idea of System Studio is that it enables designers to quickly create executable system specifications and implement them as hardware and software functions using multiple domain-specific abstractions in a single C-based environment," Mertz said. "System Studio merges control and data flow abstractions at any level of hierarchy [and] provides faster simulation execution for signal design. It also provides rapid system implementation." And, he added, it "brings design reuse up to the system level and a structured environment for large SoC design projects."

In Synopsys' CoCentric System Studio, data flow and extended hierarchical control models can be arbitrarily nested at any level of hierarchy, a capability especially useful where complex control mechanisms must be embedded in the data and signal-processing path.

The company said System Studio users can describe their systems directly in C/C++ and SystemC as well as incorporate existing Verilog and VHDL blocks.

To speed system validation, the tool accepts virtually any class of model, from black box to fully transparent models, and optimizes them for simulation.

"System Studio uses something we call 'modeling transparency,' " Kunkel said. With it, "That tool looks into the model's code, parses it, and it starts playing with it — flattening parts, assigning hierarchy and looking for opportunities to speed simulation," he said. "In this way it can also translate the C, C++ into Verilog or VHDL, so you no longer need four different models for each building block like you did with Cossap."

"The tool provides fast simulation at a system level of abstraction to support designers who are trying to understand the function of their system without going into implementation details such as timing and clocking," Mertz said. "It also provides a refinement path to get down to fully timed and clocked behavior for the purpose of providing an implementable hardware or software specification that can be handed off to an implementation team."

Mertz said the transparency feature is similar to synthesis in that it translates language and also traverses design abstraction levels. "These features are classically attributed to synthesis, but this tool is primarily a design and verification tool," Mertz said. "It is a platform for the design and verification system and a stepping-off point for the synthesis process."

The tool can transform a model to HDL for hardware synthesis, into a C model for a SystemC methodology or into ANSI C code, Mertz said.

The tool's modeling transparency technology also speeds simulation, Mertz added. "The tool automatically finds a static schedule for everything that can be simulated in a design and then ups the simulation speed by two to 10 times," he said.

The tool has an interface to standard revision control systems and to LSF load-sharing software.

Mertz said the tool is completely compatible with Cossap and that customers can import their legacy projects to System Studio.

Users holding current Cossap maintenance contracts will receive CoCentric System Studio at no additional cost, Mertz said. Per-copy pricing starts at $20,000 for a one-year term license.

CoCentric System Studio, Mertz said, is the first of many CoCentric releases the company plans for the coming months. The tool is currently shipping in limited quantities and will be available for general release in June.