Is ESL changing EDA? Absolutely!

Geoffrey James's recent article provides a succinct description of several important trends that are driving customers towards system level design and verification. He makes several points about shifts in technology and methodology, and the fact that the RTL remains the golden source even for today's ESL flows.

This is necessary, but not sufficient. Customers will require nearly a decade to make a transition to TLM as the golden source for design flows. In that period we must support mixed RTL and TLM flows. Both design IP creation and reuse, as well as functional verification, must support multiple levels of abstraction.

Technology that can handle estimation, planning, analysis, synthesis, and verification with mixed TLM and RTL IP is a requirement for mainstream customer adoption. But more important will be methodology that helps customers achieve both a TLM-driven design and verification solution, and reuse existing RTL IP.

Steve Brown