Open digital design with Renode at EW 2019

Published: February 19th, 2019

As new opportunities unfold for modern edge computing and the bold concept of open source digital design is paving its way through the silicon industry, Antmicro is kicking into high gear with new platforms and new partnerships which we will be proudly presenting at Embedded World 2019 in Nuremberg, Germany from February 26th to 28th.

This calls for an adequate presence at the leading embedded event in Europe - this year, join us at Antmicro’s own, 35m2 booth located in Hall 4A at booth 4A/621, for a variety of technology demonstrators spanning from edge AI and multi-camera solutions to open RISC‑V platforms and Renode, the open source multinode simulation framework gaining popularity among our partners, customers and community developers.

Antmicro on Embedded World 2019

Renode, our open source simulation framework quickly gaining momentum with usage from partners and customers like Google, Intel and Microchip, will be prominently featured at Antmicro’s main booth to showcase some of the new developments. Originally aimed at radically improving the development and testing workflow of multi-node IoT systems - a fast-growing segment in itself - thanks to its flexibility Renode is quickly finding new use cases, like security research (e.g. Dover Microsystems), pre-silicon development (Microsemi) or ML framework testing (for Google TensorFlow Lite).

If you haven’t heard, just two months ago Microsemi (earlier in 2018 acquired by Microchip) announced PolarFire SoC, an FPGA SoC platform based on RISC‑V, cementing its long-running dedication to the RISC‑V ecosystem. In an equally forward-looking move, Microsemi had contracted Antmicro to support the upcoming PolarFire SoC platform in Renode so that a freely available pre-silicon development framework would be released to customers the day its physical incarnation was announced! That's right: you can start developing software for Microsemi’s PolarFire SoC now using Renode 1.6 while waiting for the silicon to ship, and significantly decrease the time it takes to get your PFSoC-based product to market. Microsemi / Microchip will also present their own experience and experiments with Renode in a talk entitled An Open Source Framework for Rapid Application Development for Complex SoCs on Wednesday, February 27th at 2:30 PM at Conference Counter NCC Ost.

Renode

On a similar note, we will be showing initial HDL co-simulation capabilities for even better HW/SW co-design experience - a useful perk for developing soft cores and SoCs on FPGAs or entirely new platforms. Adding to that, there are multiple improvements all across the board for both ARM and RISC‑V platforms as well as a new UI that is under development for Renode to help non-CLI users be more effective in their development process.

Additionally, as a member of both the Linux Foundation and the Zephyr Project, Antmicro will also be showing a dedicated live Renode CI setup running Zephyr OS on multiple RISC‑V and ARM nodes at the Zephyr Project in Hall 4, Booth 4/170. Following Renode’s adoption as the primary testing framework by TensorFlow Lite’s MCU team at Google, Renode is now leading the charge in building the infrastructure for testing complex Zephyr setups; if you’re building an MCU based system, especially heterogeneous and/or featuring multiple nodes, be sure to see the Renode demos at both booths.

The practical implications of an entirely new approach involving actual hardware/software co-design enabled by the functional simulation capabilities of Renode were summarised in a joint paper by Antmicro and cyber-security startup Dover Microsystems to be presented at this year’s talk session. Come and listen to Design Cycle Acceleration for Hardware/Software Co-Design with Renode on Wednesday, February 27th at 12:00 PM in the Conference Counter NCC Ost.

Schedule a meeting

Whether you’re interested in a specific technology, want to discuss ideas for your next-gen edge/embedded device or find out how Antmicro’s experience with open methodologies can bring advantage to your workflow, feel free to book a meeting at the 4A/621 booth by writing to our VP Business Development, Michael, at mgielda@antmicro.com.

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