New EDA consortium promotes assertion language
By Richard Goering
EE Times
May 22, 2003 (4:10 p.m. EST)
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Seeking to accelerate the adoption of the Property Specification Language (PSL) currently undergoing standardization by Accellera, 13 EDA companies have joined together with two user companies to form the PSL/Sugar Consortium. The new organization will hold its first meeting June 3 at the Design Automation Conference (DAC).
PSL, derived from an IBM language called Sugar, is a formal language for assertion specification and complex modeling. It provides capabilities beyond the assertion language constructs in SystemVerilog 3.1. The PSL language reference manual version 1.01 was approved by the Accellera Functional Verification Technical Committee early this year, and is currently under consideration for approval by the Accellera board of directors.
"The consortium is really to augment what Accellera is doing today," said Tony Larson, vice president of marketing at Verplex Systems and acting spokesman for the PSL/Sugar Consortium. "We're relying on Accellera to create the language, and we're trying to support that effort by helping users adopt the language," he said.
Larson said the organizational structure of the consortium will be defined at the DAC meeting, which will include an election of officers. The consortium's initial plans include forming a user's group, sponsoring PSL technical events, setting up a bulletin board, authoring technical white papers and establishing a Web site.
EDA founding members include 0-In Design Automation, @HDL, Cadence, Novas, Real Intent, Summit Design, SynaptiCAD, Tharas Systems, TNI-Valiosys, TransEDA, Verisity, Veritable and Verplex. Larson said all either support PSL now or have stated the intention to do so. On the user side, IBM and Ricoh are members.
The consortium is "extremely complementary" to Accellera's standards efforts, said Dennis Brophy, Accellera chairman. "We welcome the development of a consortium to drive the development of methodologies that support our standards," he said.
The consortium's DAC meeting will take place Tuesday, June 3, from 9 to 11 a.m. in room 202A and B of the Anaheim Convention Center. The educational and organizational meeting is open to all.