CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
8 December 2004
Product News
Release Of SPIRIT Specification Enables IP And Tool-Set Interoperability
The SPIRIT (Structure for Packaging, Integrating and Re-using IP within Tool-flows) Consortium, a group of leading companies in the field of IP creation and integration, announced the first public release of the approved SPIRIT specification. Today's release of SPIRIT Version 1.0 means for the first time that SoC (System-on-Chip) designers worldwide have access to an industry standard for IP re-use that will enable them to select, configure and integrate SPIRIT-compatible IP from multiple vendors using a range of different SPIRIT-compatible EDA tools and design environments.
The persistent goal of the SoC industry to automate large parts of the system integration process has been plagued by the absence of an industry standard data format for IP integration and configuration. Consequently, most IP integration flows remained proprietary or labor-intensive, hindering adoption. By allowing IP integration data to be expressed in a standard XML format, the SPIRIT specification provides the vital link that will allow IP from multiple vendors to flow into multiple tool flows. The standardization will give SoC designers the twin benefits of a richer IP pool coupled with a wider choice of design environments. SPIRIT will also give a real competitive edge to IP providers and tool vendors that adopt the standard. IP vendors will benefit from a standardized way of making their deliverables compatible with customer design flows, and EDA vendors will have a large pool of IP that can be automatically imported, configured and integrated using their design tools.
"The release of an approved specification that has already been validated by leading IP and EDA providers within the SPIRIT consortium is a real win-win situation for the industry and users alike," said Ralph von Vignau, Consortium Chairman and Director Technology & Standards of Philips Semiconductors Chief Technology Office - Reuse Technology Group. "It represents a major step forward in short time-to-market integration of the complex system-on-chip solutions needed for today's and tomorrow's embedded systems."
In the period between the release of an alpha version in June of this year and today's public release of Version 1.0, the SPIRIT specification has been thoroughly tested by the SPIRIT consortium membership on real IP and EDA tools with remarkable results. Furthermore, the excitement generated around the SPIRIT initiative and specification release has driven membership up to more than 30 members in total, further substantiating the released and proven SPIRIT specification as the de facto standard.
SPIRIT Version 1.0 addresses SoC design at RTL level, but work is already underway to draft Version 2.0 of the standard that will extend the specification to cover comprehensive interoperability between tools and explicit support of Electronic System Level (ESL) Design and Verification. This will include, for example, the ability to launch application-specific tasks operating on SPIRIT formats from within different EDA tools. It will also enable provision of configurable IP for automated ESL design, assembly, verification and simulation.
The SPIRIT 1.0 standard and supporting deliverables are available to the public under a simple non-restrictive click-through license at: http://www.spiritconsortium.com .
The Structure for Packaging, Integrating and Re-using IP within Tool-flows (SPIRIT) consortium was created to develop a standard for more efficient integration of IP in System-on-Chip (SoC) platform design in two areas: IP meta-data description and a tool integration API. The consortium is comprised of leading EDA, IP and system and semiconductor companies, including ARM, Cadence Design Systems Inc., Mentor Graphics, Royal Philips Electronics, STMicroelectronics and Synopsys, Inc.
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