Neurealm developed a complete FPGA emulation setup for a US-based chip maker’s ARM-based dual-core processor using Xilinx Virtex™ VU19P FPGAs, enabling early software bring-up and validation of complex SoC components.

Business Context

A semiconductor company designing ARM-based server processors needed an emulation platform to accelerate software development and validate sophisticated processor features—security, power management, high-speed DDR4 interfacing, and Linux support—before silicon availability. With both FPGAs running at over 80% utilization, the project demanded tight integration of hardware, firmware, and system-level expertise to meet performance goals and reduce time-to-market risk.

Solutions

Neurealm partitioned and mapped the ARMv8 SoC across two VU19P FPGAs, added DDR4 memory via MIG IP, and implemented TDM logic with auto calibration to handle I/O constraints. They executed full hardware bring-up with external peripherals, verified modules using JTAG and OpenOCD, and successfully booted Linux, enabling standard application execution on the emulated system.