- Admin
- June 4, 2025
Case Study
Performance-Optimized Compute Subsystem Development and SoC Test Chip
Client
Multinational semiconductor and software design company based in Europe
Scope
The Ignitarium Multimedia system-on-chip (SoC) is designed for use in premium mobile devices. The SoC is an R&D chip intended for use in gaming, video camera, web browsing, and video conferencing with Arm’s latest CPUs and GPUs. Ignitarium, through its deep expertise in multicore processor-based designs, provides design and verification support for the development of Arm Cortex-A and Arm Cortex-M series based SoCs.
Challenges
Ignitarium was chosen to provide design and verification expertise for a high-performance compute subsystem and SoC project. Leveraging its processor-based design knowledge, Ignitarium actively took ownership in design exploration, intellectual property (IP) design and verification, power, clock and reset tree verification, CPU performance verification, RTL restructuring, and memory and tech cell replacement.
Solution
Ignitarium contributed to the performance-optimized compute subsystem and SoC design through:
SubSystem Verification:
• Performed comprehensive power verification of an 8-core Armv9.2-A processor cluster, Arm Cortex-M85 processor (Armv8.1-M), and Cortex-M55 processor.
• Owned verification of critical subsystems like interrupts, memory map, processor configuration register (PCR), and CPU components.
• Utilized formal verification methodology for clock and reset tree, global interrupt controller (GIC), CPU, and GPU verification.
IP Development & Verification:
• Led the development and verification of a reset generator module (RGM IP) crucial for the SoC that can be reused in upcoming versions.
RTL Restructuring, RAM integration and Techcell replacement:
• Proposed, refined, and implemented an RTL restructuring flow to optimize the SoC design.
• Migrated SoC design to TSMC technology by integrating physical RAMs and verified functionality of all replaced TSMC cells using logic equivalence check (LEC).
ARM IP
• Cortex-A
• Cortex-M
• Mali GPUs
• Mali Image Signal Processors
Application Area
• Gaming
• Smart Cameras
• Smartphones
• Vision
• Wearables
