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Benefits:

  • Enables SmartDV IP to be analyzed before RTL or hardware exists
  • Reduces design risk by identifying bottlenecks early
  • Helps compare interface technology trade-offs: PCIe vs CXL vs Ethernet vs UCIe
  • Supports SmartDV’s high configurability with VisualSim’s parameter frameworks
  • Provides end-to-end visibility of system bandwidth, latency, power, and QoS
  • Ensures interoperability of SmartDV IP with CPU/GPU/NPU subsystems
  • Future-proofs the platform for new SmartDV interface IP
  • Accelerates time-to-market and reduces integration cost

The SmartDV System Modeling Component Library in VisualSim Architect enables system-level modeling and architectural exploration of SmartDV’s silicon-proven IP solutions, including CXL, PCIe, UCIe, MIPI, USB, Ethernet, and future SmartDV protocol IPs.

These components bring together the functional accuracy of SmartDV designs and the performance–power–latency analysis strengths of VisualSim, enabling early design validation long before RTL, hardware prototypes, or FPGA emulation platforms are available.

This library provides a future-proof framework so that any new SmartDV IP—including next-generation standards—can be integrated seamlessly into VisualSim with full parameterization, configurability, and system-level visibility.

Overview

The SmartDV component family in VisualSim provides:

    • Parametric, vendor-aligned models of SmartDV interface IP
    • Modeling of transaction flow, timing, retry, credit management, and ordering rules
    • Configurable PHY-level attributes (latency, lane width, flit size, CRC behavior)
    • Support for link training, power-state transitions, and dynamic link management
    • Accurate functional flow to represent SmartDV VIP behavior in system contexts
    • Ability to model thousands of parallel transactions and their impact on system performance
    • Seamless integration with VisualSim’s memory systems, NoC, processors, power modeling, and task graphs

This allows designers to explore interconnect bottlenecks, bandwidth utilization, latency violations, and system stability at scale.

Supported SmartDV IP

This System Modeling Component Library contains SmartDV IP families:

SmartDV CXL

  • Supports CXL.io, CXL.cache, CXL.mem
  • CXL 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 specifications
  • Multi-host pooling, switching, fabric topologies
  • Memory expanders, accelerators, Type-1/2/3 devices

Open Framework for Future IP

VisualSim’s builder architecture enables the SmartDV IP library to automatically scale with any future SmartDV VIP or PHY product release.

Key Parameters

  • Lane count, link width
  • Flit/packet size
  • Supported message types
  • Latency per layer
  • Power-state transitions
  • Retry, credit, and flow control logic
  • Device types (root complex / endpoint / switch / accelerator)
  • Memory region configuration (CXL.mem)
  • Cache coherency options (CXL.cache)
  • CXL fabric topologies

Validation

The SmartDV component family is validated against:

  • SmartDV VIP specifications
  • Standard interface specifications
  • Timing and throughput diagrams
  • Real-world bandwidth and link-latency measurements where available

This ensures the models are reliable, vendor-aligned, and ready for system-level analysis.

Analysis and Reports

VisualSim provides:

  • Link latency
  • Bandwidth and saturation points
  • Retries and protocol-level stalls
  • Memory access latency (for CXL.mem)
  • Power-state transition overhead
  • Traffic distribution across lanes
  • Fabric utilization statistics
Link to SmartDV IP modeling documentation

Applications

  • Early system architecture exploration using SmartDV protocols
  • CXL system design: memory expander sizing, pooling fabrics, Type-3 accelerators
  • PCIe/CXL bandwidth and bottleneck identification
  • Multi-chiplet design using UCIe + PCIe + CXL together
  • Data center and AI infrastructure interconnect optimization
  • SoC platform integration and IP selection
  • Automotive high-speed link performance evaluation
  • Choosing between interface standards during platform planning

Key Features

  • Supports full SmartDV transaction semantics
  • Parametric across lanes, link widths, clock speeds, and QoS policies
  • Models ordering, retries, credits, flow control, link training
  • Configurable power-state behavior (L0/L1/L2, low-power modes)
  • Integrates with CPU/GPU/NPU models for full-system exploration
  • Traffic replay using task graphs, traces, or synthetic workloads
  • Compatible with PCIe, Ethernet, CXL, UCIe, DDR, and NoC subsystems
  • Scales to simulate fabric-level, rack-level, and chiplet-level interconnect designs
  • Represents SmartDV VIP behavior for performance and latency studies
  • Ready for future SmartDV IP families without redesign

Integration with Task Graphs & Workloads

VisualSim allows workloads to be mapped across:

  • CPU, GPU, NPU, accelerators
  • CXL memory devices
  • PCIe endpoints
  • UCIe chiplet links
  • Ethernet or mixed interconnect topologies

This enables realistic evaluation of how SmartDV interfaces handle the actual system workload, instead of synthetic micro-benchmarks.

Interconnect and System-Level Integration

SmartDV models integrate with:

  • PCIe switches and fabrics
  • CXL memory pooling architectures
  • UCIe chiplet fabrics
  • Ethernet-based disaggregated memory networks
  • DDR/LPDDR memory systems
  • NoC, crossbars, and cache coherency systems

This allows users to simulate and optimize full multi-hop, multi-device architectures

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