Hardware Design

Aricent Hardware Services enable silicon vendors to develop complex systems with superior designs with low cost and high performance. Aricent offers services across the entire span of Hardware Development Life Cycle (HDLC). Aricent’s services help to:

• Eliminate incorrect design paths
• Limit design costs during the R&D process
• Achieve estimated time to market

The Aricent Hardware design team can work with you to meet your embedded hardware design goals. We provide digital logic design services for ASIC/FPGA/PLD and IP cores. Our Hardware Verification and Validation services ensure that your hardware implementation is consistent with the specifications and the outputs are correct. As part of an integrated team, our hardware engineering expertise can help you identify system requirements, provide custom Hardware Design, Prototyping and Testing. We ensure that the hardware selected satisfies both individual hardware requirements and operates as a system to satisfy the overall system objectives. Service Offerings Aricent offers following hardware services:

• VLSI Verification
• VLSI Validation
• VLSI (ASIC/FPGA) Designs
• Hardware Engineering

VLSI Verification With the ever-increasing density, development cost, and turn-around time of VLSI chips it is crucial to have a design verification methodology that ensures full functionality of first-pass chips. Aricent has an elite team of verification experts. Our VLSI verification services include:

• Module, Chip and System level verification
• Writing test plans and test cases for block, chip and system level verification
• Developing reusable verification test bench environments
• Design and development of reusable Bus Functional Models (BFMs) for effective system level verification
• BFMs designed with the following options to introduce variations in the outputs, Automatic Error checking, etc.
• Design of bus protocol monitors and random test generators
• Automated Scripts for running test cases
• Automation at the module, chip and system level
• RTL, Pre-Layout & Post-Layout netlist verification
• Different verification methods followed by using Verilog, System Verilog, Vera, Specman, etc.
• Maximum code coverage through usage of embedded assertions
• Test Vectors for post silicon testing
• Fault Coverage
• FPGA Emulation

VLSI Validation Prior to manufacturing, the design of the VLSI circuits must be completely validated in order to minimize the costs and ensure that the product being built is technologically correct. Our validation services include:

• Macrocell Level Validation
• Diagnostic software, firmware-level testing
• Porting services to different OS platforms
• Chip Level Validation
• Reference design and prototyping
• Module level validation using test software / firmware
• Integrated system software
• Porting / Device Driver
• Debug using high end test and measurement equipment

VLSI (ASIC/FPGA) Design Correct design decision must be made early in the design process in order to avoid incorrect design paths and limit the expenditure. Aricent’s VLSI (ASIC & FPGA) design team has the capabilities to handle complex multimillion gate designs using the state-of-the-art tools. Our design services include:

• Generation of system specification requirements
• Defining Partition of hardware-software
• Definition of high-level architecture
• Definition of micro-architecture
• Development and verification of reference model
• Analysis of performance/trade-offs
• RTL Coding
• Evaluation, customization and integration of IP if required
• Synthesis of RTL for ASIC/ FPGA
• Analysis of timing and equivalence check

Hardware Engineering Aricent offers solutions for board-level design, special systems packaging, custom design, and complete system Integration. For customer-manufacturing requirements, Aricent is fully equipped to offer board designs from architecture to final release. Our board design team is highly experienced in high-speed, multi-layered, multi-CPU and high performance board designs. Our hardware engineering services include:

• Board level design
• Schematic Capture
• PCB Designs, PCB assembly
• BOM analysis and management
• Timing analysis and signal integrity
• Agency testing (EMI / EMC)
• Prototyping, testing and diagnostics
• PCB layout and Gerber verification
• Board bring-up and functional testing
• Diagnostic software
• Sustenance engineering
• Miniaturization
• Cost effective re-design
• Add-on feature implementation
• Reliability testing
• BOM and schematics maintenance

Aricent Expertise Aricent’s Design and Verification team has completed projects in the areas of USB 2.0 (Device, host OTG, Hub), PCI2.2, PCI-X, Gigabit MAC IP core and WMAC IP. The Verification Environment is built using Vera and Verilog HDL. Aricent’s Verification expertise lies in:

• 802.11b, GMAC, PCI & PCI-X, PCI-Express, AHB Bus
• Packet Processing (IPV4, IPV6 Fragment/De-Fragment)
• USB2.0, USB OTG, EHCI, USB HUB
• ATA/ATAPI, Serial ATA, SAS (Serial Attached SCSI)

Aricent’s Validation expertise lies in:

• BSP / Device Drivers
• VxWorks, Nucleus, Linux, Windows & WinCE
• Processors
• ARM 7/9, PowerPC, Xscale, Intel 80XXX
• Network Processors
• Broadcom, Infineon
• Interfaces
• PCI, PCMCIA, USB, I2C, Flash, CAN

Aricent’s Design Expertise lies in:

• Interfacing technologies like USB, PCI, Media Access Controllers
• ASIC/FPGA/PLD based digital logic designs and IP cores

Aricent Advantages With our in-depth knowledge and consultative approach, we can accelerate time to market, reduce risk, lower project lifecycle costs, and provide robust, highly-differentiated hardware solutions. Accelerate Time to Market: Aricent’s Hardware Engineering services can help you market your system in the shortest possible time. Extensive Experience: Our 100+ engineers and project managers represent more than 500 person-years of engineering experience and have successfully completed numerous engagements with silicon customers. With our in-depth knowledge and problem solving skills, we can point out and resolve potential technical problems much earlier in the design phase. Partnerships with semiconductor vendors: Our partnerships with semiconductor vendors give us inside knowledge of their technology that we can apply to speed your VLSI development. Reduce Project Risks: Aricent assigns an experienced program manager to each engagement to reduce project risk and ensure that development proceeds smoothly. Our program managers provide you with:

• Strong project management experience
• Proven methodologies
• Risk mitigation strategies
• Close Communication.

Lower project lifecycle costs Aricent reduces product lifecycle costs with Industry-leading QA testing expertise that ensures several benefits. Early identification of problems: Our software design and QA approach enables us to identify and fix any defects early, when they are much less expensive to correct. By avoiding discovery of problems later in the process, after volume manufacturing begins or thousands of units have already been shipped, we help you reduce project lifecycle costs. Documented source code: By providing you with documented source code, we help minimize software maintenance costs during the product’s lifecycle Maximized system robustness and differentiation: Aricent’s Hardware Services can help you create a robust system that is tailored to the specific needs of your customers. We offer:

• Close relationships with our partners
• In depth knowledge of multiple systems and tools
• Extensive testing through verification and validation

Engineers at Aricent are experienced in all stages of hardware development, from design through testing, deployment, and support. We have a rich knowledge base in domains such as networking, multi media processing, connectivity and wireless low power SoC design. ISO and CMM level 5 processes govern our design and development services.