A look back on 2012: Accellera

12/13/2012 11:10 AM EST

• New SystemC Library (16 Jul 2012) - The release of version 2.3.0 SystemC open source proof-of-concept library is now available at no charge to the worldwide electronic design community. Compatible with the newly revised IEEE 1666 "Standard SystemC Language Reference Manual," announced by the IEEE Standards Association in November 2011, version 2.3.0 provides a number of important new features, including support for transaction-level modeling (TLM).
• Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard (4 Jun 2012) - Accellera Systems Initiative announced the official debut of the Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard (UCIS) version 1.0 at the 2012 Design Automation Conference (DAC). UCIS is a first step towards the creation of an application interface (API) that allows for interoperability of verification coverage data across multiple tools from multiple vendors. With the growing complexity of chip design, coverage metrics are critical to measuring and guiding design verification. UCIS offers chip designers a standardized way to model and access information among different tools to achieve full verification closure.
• SystemC AMS 2.0 Standard to Advance Dynamic and Reactive Mixed-Signal System Design (13 Mar 2012 at DATE) - announced the release of the SystemC Analog/Mixed-Signal (AMS) 2.0 draft standard to address the need for more dynamic and reactive modeling features for analog/mixed-signal system-level design. Draft LRM reviewed.

• DVCon 2012 (Feb):

1st Accellera Systems Initiative Day featuring tutorials on technical standards: SystemC, UVM, UCIS, IP-XACT
Full conference registration increased 10% from 2011
Monday tutorial attendance up more than 50% from last year

• North American SystemC Users Group – DVCon (Feb), DAC (Jun)
• European SystemC Users Group – DATE (Mar)  and FDL (Sep)
• India SystemC Users Group (Apr)
• SystemC Japan (Jul)

• Technical Tutorial: "UVM: Ready, Set, Deploy!"
• Technical Tutorial: "An Introduction to IEEE 1666-2011, the New SystemC Standard"
• Technical Tutorial: "An Introduction to the Unified Coverage Interoperability Standard"
• Technical Tutorial: "Verification and Automation Improvement Using IP-XACT"

• John Aynsley Is First to Receive Accellera Systems Initiative Technical Excellence Award (24 Feb 2012 at DVCon) - The Award recognizes the outstanding achievements John has made to the organization's SystemC standardization efforts.
• Synopsys Honors Accellera Systems Initiative with 2012 Tenzing Norgay Interoperability Achievement Award for advancing industry standards that enable interoperable system design flows (24 May 2012) - Accellera honored as Open SystemC Initiative and Accellera merger paves way for broad interoperability standards.
• Dennis Brophy receives first leadership award for vision, leadership and contribution over two decades (31 May 2012)

• After years of slow growth, technologies such as high-level synthesis and virtual prototyping are seeing adoption and showing results in an increasing number of production environments.
• With broad adoption of TLM-based design and verification industry-wide, multi-platform design based largely on IP reuse has emerged as significant technology advancement.  This methodology uses previously developed software, verification suites and significantly fewer new IP blocks than typical large designs. The methodology is being used by chip firms to continue to build even more complex SoCs.
• The importance of analog mixed-signal design continues to grow and Accellera Systems Initiative creates the AMS draft 2.0 which enables developers to dynamically change time steps and data rates during simulation.