Equivalence checking solution enables reliable designs

OneSpin’s EC-FPGA product augments Microsemi’s Libero design flow to ensure the functional consistency of high-reliability designs throughout design refinement, significantly reducing the risk of an end-product fault.

By leveraging OneSpin’s equivalence checker with Microsemi’s design flow, designers can be certain that when they implement the most aggressive design flow optimisations to improve FPGA device power consumption, performance and area utilisation, they do not introduce functional errors. The tool verifies functional equivalence between the register transfer level code and the netlist prior to FPGA download, thus reducing prototype verification requirements and ensuring that no design flow bugs appear in the final device.

“OneSpin Solutions has created innovative formal-based design verification and equivalence checking solutions that are being used to fully vet some of the most safety critical designs in production today,” said Bruce Weyer, Vice President and Business Unit Manager, Microsemi. “We believe that by including equivalence checking as part of the design flow, we will better meet our customers’ stringent requirements for high-reliability designs.”

Erik Matusek, Safety System Platform Manager, Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC, commented: “The Microsemi ProASIC3 FPGA is a core component of the Advanced Logic System, and use of the OneSpin 360 Equivalence Checker is an integral part of our FPGA development process for nuclear safety systems.”

“High reliability is a critical consideration for designers employing Microsemi devices and the reason why equivalence checking is an important technology in this flow,” said Dr. Raik Brinkmann, President and CEO, OneSpin Solutions. “Given our own expertise in this area, we are delighted to co-operate with Microsemi on a flow that targets the sharp-end of verification needs, high reliability.”