Modern Simulation Acceleration and Emulation Technology

Emulation systems always seem to be labeled as either FPGA-based or processor-based. While the origin of this categorization is unknown, we do know that the classification is not technically accurate because the term “processor-based” describes architecture and “FPGA-based” describes silicon implementation. Historically, FPGAs were used in emulators to implement a gate-level mapping of the design. As designs increasingly included behavioral code, low-power design techniques, and complex clocking, the gate-level mapping became very inefficient. For example, a behavioral model of a 32-bit by 32-bit multiplier takes only about 25% of the hardware resources of a gate-level implementation.