Case Study: NetSpeed Systems achieves exhaustive, hundreds of times faster cache‑coherent NoC verification with Cadence Design Systems' Palladium XP and Incisive

NetSpeed Systems - Customer Case Study

NetSpeed Systems develops Gemini, a highly configurable cache‑coherent network-on-chip (NoC) IP for SoC designers that unifies cache, I/O, and non‑coherent traffic. Because Gemini offers vast configurability, verification posed major business and technical challenges: an astronomical number of test cases, deeply stateful bugs that only appear after long runs, and zero tolerance for coherency failures — all while meeting product schedules and building customer confidence.

To solve this, NetSpeed combined Cadence Palladium XP emulation with Incisive simulation in a “depth and breadth” strategy and used its NocWeaver to generate thousands of nightly configurations. Palladium XP enabled realistic, long-run workloads and cycle-accurate replay into simulation for fast debug, delivering validation hundreds of times faster, exhaustive coverage of the verification space, and reducing test cycles that once took weeks to minutes — dramatically improving productivity and lowering field‑failure risk.

NetSpeed Systems

JJ Tuan

Chief Verification Architect