About helium
Speed and Accuracy when You Need It
Speed and Accuracy when You Need It
Built to enable the rapid creation of virtual and hybrid platforms, the Cadence® Helium™ Virtual and Hybrid Studio gives you the speed you need for early pre-silicon software bring-up and the accuracy you need for pre-silicon hardware/software co-verification, all with a unified embedded software debug experience and native integration with Cadence’s Xcelium™, Palladium®, and Protium™ verification engines.
Key Benefits
Rapid Platform Assembly
Powerful GUI-based correct-by-construction virtual SoC platform assembly studio. Start with a reference platform booting the latest Linux and Android build, or from scratch with an extensive virtual model library, including, native support for the full Arm® Fast Model portfolio.
Advanced Hybrid with Gearshift Technology
Seamlessly mix virtual models with RTL models running on Xcelium, Palladium, or Protium engines, and dynamically hot swap from virtual to RTL models midway through simulations using the unique Gearshift technology.
Unified Debug
Multi-core, multi-process embedded software debug interface connects seamlessly to both RTL and virtual CPU models, offering a unified debug experience from virtual to hybrid to RTL.
Features
Helium Virtual and Hybrid Studio
Next-generation engine for HW/SW co-verification and debug
Customers
Helium Studio’s gearshift technology lets us hot-swap software execution from virtual to RTL, giving us the software bring-up speed and the accuracy of RTL when needed. It also enables HW/SW co-debug running software on a virtual core or RTL core.
Narendra Konda, senior director of Hardware Engineering at NVIDIA
We found Helium studio runs 50-100X faster in hybrid mode, allowing for quick software code iteration. It natively integrates with the Palladium system, enabling a smooth transition from virtual to hybrid to full RTL in emulator for HW/SW co-verification, and allowing us to accelerate our design schedules by months.
Qing Lin, Chief Technical Officer, Cygnus
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