HP Rolls Out New Digital Signal Processing Software to Provide the Industry's most Comprehensive Design Solution

HP Design and Synthesis Software Tools Help Speed up Time to Market and Reduce Development Costs for Communication Products

PALO ALTO, Calif. June 2, 1997--To help communication product designers reduce time to market and development costs, Hewlett-Packard Company today announces plans to deliver the industry's most comprehensive digital signal processsing (DSP) design system as part of its effort to broaden its solutions for the electronic design automation (EDA) industry. The software is comprised of two new DSP tools - DSP Designer and DSP Synthesis- that work together to help DSP and integrated circuit (IC) designers significantly improve productivity and reduce development costs.

"For the first time, DSP designs can be co-developed with analog, digital and RFIC circuits, allowing design verification of the DSP portion of the circuit with the target RF circuitry," said Jacob Egbert, general manager of the HP EEsof Division. "This provides greater time efficiencies because the DSP algorithms needed to overcome the imperfections that the RF channel produces can now be developed simultaneously within the same environment. HP is currently the only EDA company to deliver RF/DSP cosimulation capability within a single design environment."

Increased Productivity

The HP DSP Designer software, developed by the HP EEsof Division as part of its newly introduced HP Advanced Design System (see related announcement: HP's New Advanced Design System Offers Industry's First Integrated Solution for End-to-End Signal Path Design), includes a block diagram algorithm development environment, a DSP filter tool, a measurement instrumentation controller, and a powerful data post-processing capability.

The HP DSP Designer's built-in instrument controller provides extensive links to measurement instrumentation. It helps design engineers avoid time-consuming and non-portable methods of hand-coding scripts by allowing them to interact with a user-friendly dialog box to connect to instruments and collect data for use as a source in their design.

Built into the HP DSP Designer software is a new simulation technology developed by merging HP research and technology with the University of California at Berkeley Ptolemy project. This new simulation engine facilitates co-simulation of time, frequency and data flow technologies and significantly expands the DSP development capability for mixed RF/analog/DSP communications projects.

"Achieving a milestone in design technology, HP EEsof has integrated Ptolemy signal processing technology with their highly regarded analog, RF, and microwave design software, producing an extremely attractive multi-level, mixed-signal simulation system," said Dr. Edward Lee, professor at U.C. Berkeley and founder of the Ptolemy project. "For today's complex designs in communications and multimedia applications, it is crucial to validate designs at multiple levels of abstraction. The combination of Ptolemy dataflow technology with SPICE-level modeling and simulation enables such multi-level validation in a truly integrated environment."

Reduced Development Costs

HP DSP Synthesis software works together with HP DSP Designer to help product developers speed their ideas from design to manufacturing. It is the only behavioral synthesis product targeted specifically for the communications product market that provides an effective tool for optimizing and implementing high-level DSP designs into application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Additionally, HP DSP synthesis is the only product that includes both behavioral and register transfer level (RTL) VHDL/verilog code generation, simulation and synthesis capability. The software outputs the hardware description language (HDL) in industry-standard formats for logic-synthesis tools.

This helps remove the wall between DSP designers and IC designers to better facilitate design team integration and promote speedy, error-free implementation of DSP designs. DSP engineers can now develop leading-edge designs optimized for resource sharing, scheduling and binding in the earliest stages of the development cycle.

U.S. Price and Availability

HP DSP Designer and HP DSP Synthesis software are expected to be available in the Fall at prices starting at $15,000 each.

Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global provider of computing, Internet and Intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 114,600 employees and had revenue of $38.4 billion in its 1996 fiscal year.

Information about products from HP's Test and Measurement Organization can be obtained on the World Wide Web via http://www.hp.com/go/tmnews. Additionally, information about HP EEsof can be obtained via http://www.hp.com/go/hpeesof.

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/OpenT Company Limited.

HP's New Advanced Design System Offers Industry's First Integrated Solution for End-To-End Signal Path Design

New EDA Software System to Help Increase Designer Productivity and Speed Time to Market for Communication Products

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 2, 1997-- Hewlett-Packard Company today announces the HP Advanced Design System, a new electronic design automation (EDA) software system that offers the industry's first integrated, end-to-end signal path design solution for developers of communications products. With this system, HP now provides a full range of communications systems design technologies--from circuit and electromagnetic simulation to digital signal processing (DSP) synthesis and physical design--all in a single environment. The software is developed and marketed by the HP EEsof Division, an industry leader in the radio frequency (RF) and microwave design software field.

The HP system provides new DSP design and synthesis software in addition to significant new design capabilities for microwave and radio-frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) design. The integration and co-simulation of RF and DSP analysis is unique in the EDA industry, as is the software's availability on both UNIX and PC platforms.

"The HP Advanced Design System achieves our vision of providing a single software environment for the design of the communications signal path," said Jacob Egbert, general manager of the HP EEsof Division.. "We believe this integrated environment will enable our customers to eliminate design errors resulting from disconnects found today between RF/analog and DSP design teams and improve their productivity and time-to-market for their communication products."

Increased Productivity

The HP Advanced Design System uses a top-level simulation tool to offer unprecedented speed and accuracy in RF system simulation. The system simulation capability of HP OmniSys, HP's previous system design solution, has been enhanced with the use of an extremely fast harmonic balance simulator that allows engineers to compute full-budget simulations on any RF topology. This provides engineers with the freedom to experiment with innovative approaches to their designs.

Circuit simulation technology in the HP Advanced Design System features patent-pending new technologies, including new HP high-frequency SPICE, harmonic balance and HP Circuit Envelope simulation technologies. HP tests on the patented new harmonic balance simulation technique have shown speed enhancements up to 100 times faster than comparable solutions available today with a reduction in memory usage by up to 15 times. These speed and memory advancements enable designers to increase productivity by speeding up simulations of the very large RFIC circuits essential in today's complex communications systems.

Reduced Time to Market

Digital signal processing is a vital part of many communication designs.To address this need, the HP Advanced Design System offers two new DSP tools--HP DSP Designer and HP DSP Synthesis --developed to help design engineers take their ideas from design to manufacturing quickly and efficiently.

HP Ptolemy technology, which is built into the HP designer software, is a new simulation engine that facilitates co-simulation of time, frequency and data flow technologies and significantly expands the DSP development capability for mixed RF/analog/DSP communications projects. HP currently is the only EDA vendor to deliver RF/DSP co-simulation capability within one design environment.

HP DSP Synthesis software includes both behavioral and register transfer level (RTL) VHSIC hardware description language (VHDL)/Verilog code generation and simulation capability. The software outputs the hardware description language (HDL) in industry-standard formats for logic synthesis tools.

For traditional RF board-level design, the microwave/RF circuit designer benefits from the integration of system, circuit and electromagnetic simulation, as well as full schematic and layout with library linkages to enterprise-wide printed-circuit board (PCB) systems such as the Mentor Board Station.

U.S. Price and Availability

The HP Advanced Design System, which comes with the HP DSP Designer and HP Synthesis software built-in, offers solutions starting at $8,000 and is expected to be available in the fall.

Hewlett-Packard Company is a leading global provider of computing, Internet and Intranet solutions, services, communications products and measurement solutions, all of which are recognized for excellence in quality and support. HP has 114,600 employees and had revenue of $38.4 billion in its 1996 fiscal year.

Information about products from HP's Test and Measurement Organization can be obtained on the World Wide Web via http://www.hp.com/go/tmnews. Additionally, information about HP EEsof can be obtained via http://www.hp.com/go/hpeesof

UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/OpenT Company Limited.

Mentor Board Station is a registered trademark of Mentor Corporation.