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“Time to market was one of our first considerations in choosing Hardent to design a PCI communication bridge. They grasped the project requirements in a matter of days. Their impressive expertise and responsiveness made the development process very smooth, as if they were working right down the hall.”
Nicolas Gonthier,
Hardware Design Manager,
Verint Systems Canada Inc.
Hardware Design Manager,
Verint Systems Canada Inc.
“Having worked in past with independent electronics design consultants, we appreciate Hardent’s quality, team work and timely service. The company has excellent project management skills, open communication, constant follow-up and a flexible approach. We have been working with Hardent for about two years now. Though initially I was not excited about outsourcing R&D, I feel that I can 100% count on Hardent, as they know their business well and they directed us toward good technical decisions. ”
Michel Bitar,
R&D/ I.T Manager,
Prodco International Inc.
R&D/ I.T Manager,
Prodco International Inc.
Home > Case Studies
Electronic Design Services:
Case Studies from the Hardent Electronic Design Company
In the electronic product development industry, it is always helpful to hear about the experiences of others. As an experienced electronic design company, Hardent is more than a placement resource for electronic design services. Hardent acts as a natural extension of your engineering team and works together with clients to yield the most effective design for your electronic product development.
Below please refer to a collection of case studies that exemplify how Hardent can contribute to your business:
Hardent Electronic Design Services, Case Study 1: Timing Closure
A manufacturer of telecommunications equipment was struggling to meet performance expectations on a Virtex-5 device. With more than twenty clock domains, the design was highly complex.
Drawing on the expertise of Hardent’s electronic design, many of whom are also ATP certified trainers, Hardent set up a team to work with the customer in rewriting the timing constraints and mapping out the floor planning with the PlanAhead software tool.
The customer now easily meets their timing objectives with every build and was introduced to a new flow that speeds up the timing closure process significantly.
Hardent’s electronic design services provided a better approach to the problem, while ensuring a reliable solution was delivered to the market fast.
Hardent Electronic Design Services, Case Study 2: DDR Interface
A computer manufacturer migrating to the Virtex-5 platform needed to accelerate his design cycle and required advanced FPGA training for the company’s design team.
Hardent, one of Xilinx’s exclusive Authorized Training Providers (ATP), coordinated a private class for the client’s engineers that was delivered by a highly-experienced FPGA design engineer.
Several aspects of design engineering were presented in the training, including how to implement a high-speed DDR2 memory interface. Issues in signal integrity were also addressed. Hardent's signal integrity experts are able to quickly perform signal integrity analysis and recommend a solution to overcome relevant challenges.
Hardent’s ability to perform a wide range of FPGA-related services enable clients to benefit from specialized electronic product development experts geared to their success. Hardent ensures designs are well-optimized and workable across different aspects of the engineering.
Hardent Electronic Design Services, Case Study 3: Engineering Design Verification
An Application Specific Semiconductor Product (ASSP) manufacturer was on a tight schedule for its development of a new product containing several important new features. The manufacturer was concerned that the rush to get the product to market might compromise its quality.
As the company’s engineering team did not have the right resources to implement the verification environment for this product, they turned to the help of Hardent's verification experts, who designed a comprehensive verification methodology based on System Verilog and OVM. Assertions were added on critical interfaces to trap communication problems upfront. To reduce risk and cut development time, the customer's legacy verification IP was reused by adding OVM wrappers. Constrained-driven random stimulus generation was put in place, which allowed for the detection of special corner-case problems early in the verification cycle while reducing the number of test cases needed. Finally, functional coverage was implemented to ensure the new modules were well verified under all operating conditions.
At the end of the project, the customer possessed a cost-effective, highly configurable and easy to maintain verification environment that guaranteed a high level of quality assurance. In addition, the client’s verification engineers gained expertise in high-level verification methodologies and still have access to support from Hardent’s electronic design engineers.
