Accelerating SoC Development with Agnisys Silicon IP Portfolio Automation

Introduction

Modern System-on-Chip (SoC) designs are becoming increasingly complex as they integrate multiple processors, accelerators, memory subsystems, and peripherals. Ensuring efficient communication between these components requires a robust set of interface IPs, interconnects, and protocol bridges. However, designing and integrating these components manually can significantly increase development time,  integration challenges, late‑stage bugs, and pressure on already‑stretched engineering teams.

The Agnisys Silicon IP Portfolio addresses these challenges by providing a comprehensive set of silicon-proven and FPGA-validated IP blocks that simplify SoC design and integration. All IPs are third-party verified and available in both encrypted and plain text formats, offering flexibility for different development environments. In addition, these IPs can be configured using Agnisys’ specification-driven tool suite, IDesignSpec, which automates configuration and integration, allowing engineering teams to focus on system functionality rather than low-level interface design.

Comprehensive IP Support for Modern SoC Architectures

The Agnisys IP portfolio supports a wide range of industry-standard bus protocols commonly used in SoC architectures, including AMBA AXI, AHB, APB, Wishbone, Avalon, and TileLink. These protocols form the backbone of seamless communication between system components, enabling processors, memory controllers, and peripherals to interact efficiently. Agnisys IP helps design teams integrate complex components faster, reduce risk, and accelerate time‑to‑silicon. 

For example, the AMBA APB interface is widely used for connecting low-bandwidth peripherals to the system. It provides a simple and low-power communication mechanism designed primarily for accessing programmable control registers. Similarly, AMBA AHB supports higher-performance communication required by memory interfaces and high-bandwidth peripherals. AMBA AXI, on the other hand, is designed for high-performance systems and introduces independent read and write channels, allowing multiple outstanding transactions and improved throughput.

Beyond AMBA protocols, the Agnisys portfolio also supports Wishbone, Avalon, and TileLink, providing flexibility for different design ecosystems and processor architectures. These additional protocols ensure seamless integration whether users are building lightweight embedded systems, FPGA‑centric designs, or advanced multi‑core SoCs.  TileLink, for instance, is widely used in scalable multi-core systems, enabling synchronized memory-mapped communication across processors, accelerators, and peripherals.

Simplifying SoC Integration with Interconnect Components

In SoC designs, it is common for different components to use different bus protocols. Integrating these components requires specialized logic such as bus bridges, decoders, and converters. The Agnisys IP portfolio includes a comprehensive set of these interconnect components, allowing designers to connect heterogeneous IP blocks without modifying their internal designs.

Bus bridges enable communication between different protocols, such as AXI-to-APB, AHB-to-AXI, or TileLink-to-APB, ensuring reliable and lossless data transfers. Bus converters allow systems to adapt to different data widths, enabling communication between components with wide or narrow data buses. Decoders help route transactions from initiators to the correct target devices within the system.

To support complex architectures with multiple masters and targets, Agnisys also provides crossbar interconnect solutions. These interconnects allow multiple initiators to communicate with multiple targets simultaneously while managing arbitration and routing efficiently. Such scalable interconnect solutions are essential for modern SoC architectures that integrate numerous processing and peripheral components.

Automation Through IDesignSpec

A key differentiator of the Agnisys IP portfolio is its integration with IDesignSpec, a specification-driven automation platform. IDesignSpec transforms IP configuration and SoC integration from a manual, error‑prone process into a fast, automated, specification‑driven workflow.  Traditionally, configuring IP interfaces and integrating them into an SoC requires manual modifications to RTL and extensive verification effort. IDesignSpec simplifies this process by allowing engineers to configure IP parameters directly through a specification.

Using IDesignSpec, designers can adjust interface parameters, select protocol features, configure latency options, and generate RTL automatically. This specification-driven approach reduces manual errors, ensures consistency across designs, and accelerates the overall development cycle. Instead of spending valuable engineering time on low-level configuration tasks, teams can focus on higher-level architectural decisions and system functionality.

Enabling Faster Time-to-Market

The Agnisys Silicon IP Portfolio is designed to help engineering teams accelerate SoC development while maintaining reliability and flexibility. Because the IPs are silicon-proven and configurable, designers can quickly integrate them into new projects without extensive redevelopment. Automation through IDesignSpec further enhances productivity by streamlining configuration and reducing integration complexity.

By combining a comprehensive set of interface IPs, scalable interconnect solutions, and specification-driven automation, Agnisys enables organizations to simplify SoC design, improve development efficiency, and shorten time-to-market for new semiconductor products.

In an industry where development schedules are increasingly compressed, such automation-driven IP solutions play a critical role in enabling teams to deliver high-performance silicon faster and with greater confidence.