Carbon Design Systems-a fast moving EDA company that reduces time-to-profit for chip companies by enabling pre-silicon software validation by automatically generating an cycle and register accurate model directly from a hardware design's Verilog and/or VHDL description-announced today that it has integrated its DesignPlayer™ engine with Virtutech's Simics Instruction Set Simulator (ISS). This will enable customers with processor-based designs to execute operating systems and application-level software on a fast and accurate model of a chip or system. This integration allowed Sun Microsystems to boot its Solaris operating system on a Simics-DesignPlayer model of their design.

 "Booting an operating system on an RTL-accurate model of a design is now possible without a hardware emulator or first silicon," commented Steve Butler, President and CEO of Carbon. "The Virtutech-Carbon combination provides both the speed and accuracy to debug real software on a virtual system."

"For the first time, a design's RTL implementation can replace an ideal model without sacrificing performance," remarked Peter Magnusson, Founder and CEO of Virtutech. "Simics can now be used for architecture development, performance modeling, and software validation on the RTL hardware model."