Cadence supports development of the cloud

Today, Cadence announced additional support for companies designing the cloud. The cloud is not only a form of centralized computing and storage, but also requires very fast and rich interfaces. Cadence is adding two protocol standards used in cloud computing applications, 12Gb/s SAS and NVM Express, to the Cadence Verification IP (VIP) Catalog.

I spoke with Susan Peterson, director, of product marketing within the System Realization group at Cadence about this announcement. While everyone will cover the new protocols, and I will talk about them a little, I was more interested in the role that Cadence plays within the community. This impacts the way in which standards get created and this VIP eventually becomes available to you.

Cadence participates in over 20 different standards organizations, and being the chair of a standard committee myself, I know what a commitment that is. It is a matter of the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. That can be both in a direct and indirect sense. By indirect, I mean that you gain a level of insight into the standard that is greater than someone just reading a specification would get. You understand the decisions and tradeoffs that were made. You know where there are likely to be problems or changes in the future. You know where different implementation may have compatibility issues. It is possible to use this knowledge to create better IP, be it design IP or verification IP.  Susan also pointed out that standards groups are often myopic in that they only concentrate on certain aspects or the standard they are creating. For example, the total focus of a new standard may be on speed. What Cadence has found is that they bring a different perspective and have at times been able to identify issues that others have missed because of their perspective of wanting to verify such interfaces.



The two new interfaces that Cadence has just released are:

• NVMe:  NVMe is a storage protocol for connecting drives and controllers, unlocking the huge I/O potential of solid state drives.
• SAS 12Gb/s: 12Gb/s SAS is an enhanced protocol for connecting storage systems, delivering the massive data content required by the cloud.

This combines with other interfaces already supported including:

• Ethernet 40G/100G: These emerging high speed networking standards are critical components to support the growing demands of network fabrics and virtualization.  
• DDR4: This high performance, next generation memory interface offers 2x higher performance and 40% lower power consumption than DDR3, providing higher system throughput at a lower operating expense.
•  LRDIMM: Compared to previous RDIMM generations, LRDIMM provides up to 3X the server memory capacity while maintaining the same loading.

With this, Cadence claims to be the only provider with a complete VIP suite targeting emerging standards for cloud computing infrastructure.

Brian Bailey – keeping you covered

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