Mentor-Altera Announce Altera SoC Virtual Platforms key partnership

Mentor Embedded and Altera® have joined forces to deliver free-to-use downloadable binary versions of Vista™ Virtual Prototypes of Altera SoCs.

The Altera SoC Virtual Platform executable combines an Instruction Set Simulator CPU model with models of the processor peripherals into a binary executable available as a free download. Together with a pre-built Linux image, the virtual platform is installed within minutes, allowing developers to start software development instantly.
 

Mentor Graphics Vista Virtual Prototypes of Altera SoCs provide early, abstract functional model of the hardware to software engineers even before the hardware design is implemented in RTL or available. The Vista Virtual Prototypes can run software on embedded processor models at speeds on par with actual hardware, providing sufficiently fast simulation models for enabling pre-silicon development, software regression testing, and application development without expensive hardware.

Availability

Through the collaboration between Altera and Mentor Graphics, all SoC virtual platforms will be available as a download from the Mentor Graphics web site. To be kept informed about general availability of SoC virtual platforms, visit go.mentor.com/altera.