EDA Standards Groups Accellera and OSCI Merge
By Mark LaPedus, SemiMD senior editor
Two EDA and IP standards organizations — Accellera and the Open SystemC Initiative (OSCI) — have merged in an effort to accelerate the development of system-level standards in the IC industry.
The move was expected. In June, Accellera and OSCI signed a memorandum of understanding to form a single organization. Now, the boards of the two groups have approved the merger.
The combined organization is called the Accellera Systems Initiative. The new organization leverages the complementary efforts of both Accellera and OSCI. Known for SystemC technology, OSCI develops standards for system-level modeling, design and verification.
Accellera is best known for developing standards around design and verification languages, with extensions into IP. Last year, Accellera moved into the IP deployment and reuse standards world with the merger of The Spirit Consortium.
The merged organization — Accellera Systems Initiative — will enable and accelerate comprehensive system-level, semiconductor and IP design standards in the industry, said Stan Krolikoski, secretary for the group.
By combining the two organizations, the idea is to “get the standards out faster,” Krolikoski told SemiMD. “The notion of working in silos is no longer business as usual.”
Krolikoski was previously the secretary for Accellera and the treasurer for OSCI. He is currently the group director of standards for Cadence Design Systems Inc.
The increasing challenges of creating complex system-on-chips (SoCs) has brought the need for a single organization like Accellera Systems Initiative to create new IP and EDA standards, he added. The focus of Accellera Systems Initiative will continue to be on the standards activities that are under development by both Accelera and OSCI in three areas: systems-level verification, mixed-signal design and verification; and systems-level IP integration.
In systems-level verification, for example, there is some synergy between the TLM-2.0 SystemC Transaction Level Modeling standard from OSCI and Universal Verification Methodology (UVM) from Accellera. Under the Accellera Systems Initiative umbrella, the two standard bodies will “extend their work together,” Krolikoski said.
The same idea will also take place for mixed-signal design and verification, where the group has Verilog-AMS from Accellera and SystemC AMS from OSCI. It will also take place for systems-level IP, where the group has IP-XACT from Accellera and SystemC from OSCI.
“Our new organization is chartered to address the growing and complex needs of the semiconductor and electronics industries by developing electronic design standards that allow them to create and manufacture products quickly in our rapidly changing market place,” said Shishpal Rawat, Accellera Systems Initiative chair. “With our newly combined organization, we can efficiently accelerate the development of system-level and IP standards across multiple design environments, to increase electronic design productivity and lower the cost of designing ICs and embedded systems.”
Tags: Accellera OSCI, EDA, Groups, Standards