Samsung and Cadence: Accelerating SSD Product Development with IoT
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Digital Twin / Simulation
- Sensors - Temperature Sensors
Applicable Industries
- Electronics
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Virtual Prototyping & Product Testing
- Virtual Reality
Services
- Hardware Design & Engineering Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Samsung is a market share leader in solid-state drives (SSDs), an innovative, nonvolatile storage medium commonly used in laptops and servers in place of a rotating hard disk drive (HDD). This technology saves on power, space, and cost while simultaneously increasing product reliability. As a result, SSDs are increasingly being employed in mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. In 2012, Samsung decided to add a PCI Express interface to its SSD controllers to increase the data transfer performance, expecting this innovation to expand its market share and to address additional OEM markets.
The Challenge
Samsung, a market leader in solid-state drives (SSDs), decided to add a PCI Express interface to its SSD controllers in 2012 to increase data transfer performance and expand its market share. Traditionally, SSDs were based on the SATA protocol used for HDDs, which was compatible but had performance and throughput limitations when used with non-volatile memory. The addition of PCI Express to Samsung’s SSD significantly increased the challenges faced in device and software validation, particularly at the system-on-chip (SoC) level. This required a significant performance increase in the validation environment to validate PCI Express behavior at the SoC level, integrate and debug host driver software, and validate end-to-end bulk DMA transfers. Samsung initially attempted to use their traditional approach—a simulated testbench using simulation verification IP (VIP)—but found it too slow and inefficient for their needs with the PCI Express interface.
The Solution
To overcome the challenges, Samsung turned to Cadence for an accelerated validation solution. Cadence recommended its Palladium® XP-based validation environment using the simulation acceleration use model together with Accelerated VIP (AVIP) for PCI Express. This new environment fit in well with Samsung’s existing one, which included simulation and FPGA prototype boards. Acceleration with AVIP provided the level of control and observability available with simulation, but it ran hundreds of times faster and was available months ahead of an FPGA-based platform. Within three weeks, the accelerated validation environment including the PCI Express AVIP was up and running, enabling Samsung to find bugs they were unable to reach using simulation.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Remote Temperature Monitoring of Perishable Goods Saves Money
RMONI was facing temperature monitoring challenges in a cold chain business. A cold chain must be established and maintained to ensure goods have been properly refrigerated during every step of the process, making temperature monitoring a critical business function. Manual registration practice can be very costly, labor intensive and prone to mistakes.
Case Study
Cloud Solution for Energy Management Platform-Schneider Electric
Schneider Electric required a cloud solution for its energy management platform to manage high computational operations, which were essential for catering to client requirements. As the business involves storage and analysis of huge amounts of data, the company also needed a convenient and scalable storage solution to facilitate operations efficiently.
Case Study
Leveraging the IoT to Gain a Competitive Edge in International Competition
Many large manufacturers in and outside Japan are competing for larger market share in the same space, expecting a growing demand for projectors in the areas of entertainment, which requires glamor and strong visual performance as well as digital signage that can attract people’s attention. “It is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate ourselves with stand-alone hardware products,” says Kazuyuki Kitagawa, Director of Service & Support at Panasonic AVC Networks. “In order for Panasonic to grow market share and overall business, it is essential for us to develop solutions that deliver significant added value.” Panasonic believes projection failure and quality deterioration should never happen. This is what and has driven them to make their projectors IoT-enabled. More specifically, Panasonic has developed a system that collects data from projectors, visualizes detailed operational statuses, and predicts issues and address them before failure occurs. Their projectors are embedded with a variety of sensors that measure power supply, voltage, video input/ output signals, intake/exhaust air temperatures, cooling fan operations, and light bulb operating time. These sensors have been used to make the projector more intelligent, automatically suspending operation when the temperature rises excessively, and automatically switching light bulbs. Although this was a great first step, Panasonic projectors were still not equipped with any capability to send the data over a network.
