Industrially Proving the SPIRIT Consortium Specifications for Design Chain Integration

There has traditionally been significant engineering overhead required for the integration of multi-vendor tool and IP design methodologies. Making design-chain integration efficient is the key objective of the SPIRIT Consortium. This special session paper provides an insight into how the specifications of the SPIRIT consortium are being adopted in the industry today. We present 3 production design-flow stories which show improved efficiency gained through use of the SPIRIT consortium specifications. These include an IP generator for hierarchical VLIW processor design, a full hardware/software SoC integration design flow managed through generators, and methodology support for a flow from electronic system level (ESL) design through to the 65 nm CMOS process