Sanctions-defying chip design tools that work on China chipmakers' Huawei and Phytium processors introduced by China-based firm

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China's EDA platform can now run on Arm-based and SPARC v9-based CPUs.

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One of the challenges faced by the Chinese chip design industry is the lack of advanced domestic electronic design automation (EDA) tools. Market leaders Cadence and Synopsys are unable to supply the chipmaking software to Chinese entities due to U.S. export controls. Also, until recently, no EDA tools for chip design software could work on China's domestically produced CPUs. Things are starting to change, and the Chinese firm, X-EPIC introduced Xinhuazhang, its first EDA software that can work on China's domestically produced processors. 

During a keynote at the Kunpeng Developer Day on April 25, 2024, the audience were updated on the progress of developing a domestic EDA platform that can use Huawei's Kunpeng processors (powered by the Armv8 instruction set architecture) for servers and Phytium's FeiTeng processors (which use SPARCv9-derived ISA) for supercomputers. This is a significant development for China's semiconductor industry as domestic chip designers can now design devices and simulate them using solely domestic software and hardware. 

X-EPIC says it offers a comprehensive suite of EDA tools covering all aspects of digital chip verification, from hardware simulation to system debugging and verification cloud. 

X-EPIC has completed extensive adaptation and optimization work to port its core EDA software to the Kunpeng platform. This includes adapting the compilation environment, C++/ASM compilation, cmake compilation scripts, and third-party libraries. These efforts ensure compatibility and performance optimizations for Kunpeng server clusters. Xinhuazhang's products passed Huawei's OpenLab compatibility test in 2021 and won first place in the Kunpeng Innovation Competition in 2022, a report at X-Epic claims. 

According to the company, performance improvements have been notable. Xinhuazhang's tools, such as GalaxSim and GalaxFV, can now use Huawei Kunpeng-based high-performance clusters and achieve a 2x to 3x simulation performance improvement in multiple customer test cases over non-optimized software. These enhancements significantly reduce simulation testing time and improve system-level chip simulation verification efficiency. Unfortunately, there is no word about optimizations for FeiTeng processors. 

In general, this collaboration not only strengthens the Huawei Kunpeng ecosystem but also provides a set of EDA solutions for China's domestic semiconductor industry.

Anton Shilov
Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • gg83
    This article is Very short on details.
    Reply
  • Xinhuazhang's tools, such as GalaxSim and GalaxFV, can now use Huawei Kunpeng-based high-performance clusters and achieve a 2x to 3x simulation performance improvement in multiple customer test cases over non-optimized software.

    Don't mix both of them.

    The "GalaxSim" is the logic simulator here, whereas "GalaxFV" is the verification tool. Only the GalaxSim achieved a 2-3 times improvement in simulation performance by reducing the time required for regression testing.

    But of course both these tools can utilize Kunpeng's high-performance cluster to improve computing/compilation, system-level chip efficiency etc.
    Reply
  • TechyIT223
    Too many articles on China's semiconductor tech these days. Is Tom's hardware promoting china?

    Chips war news has also been the trend lately.
    Reply
  • das_stig
    More proof that the sanctions against China are back firing, its only promoting accelerating home-grown development and eventually self-sufficiency and plenty of other questionable governments lining up to be customers.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    das_stig said:
    More proof that the sanctions against China are back firing, its only promoting accelerating home-grown development and eventually self-sufficiency and plenty of other questionable governments lining up to be customers.
    they aren't backfiring they did this job exactly how they were meant to.

    Sanctions purpose is to limit access to soemthing via normal routes.

    It will never stop gray and black market routes nor is it ever expected to stop advancement (just slow them down).
    Reply
  • TechyIT223
    hotaru251 said:
    they aren't backfiring they did this job exactly how they were meant to.

    Sanctions purpose is to limit access to soemthing via normal routes.

    It will never stop gray and black market routes nor is it ever expected to stop advancement (just slow them down).
    Right on the money
    Reply
  • hwertz
    I expect the Kunpeng (ARM) may have received a higher speedup compared to FeiTeng (SPARC v9). I'm not privy to their software, but I used gentoo (in the fairly distant past, working at the university surplus so I had access to odd computers). I futzed with it on x86 (of course -- no x86-64 yet that long ago), DEC Alpha, DEC MIPs, an SGI MIPS, a HP PA-RISC, Motorla 68K, and Power/PowerPC (both an IBM and an Apple). More recently I installed Chrubuntu on an ARM Chromebook (retired, unfortunately the chassis, battery power connect, etc. all kind of disintegrated after a while.) I've kept up on the state of things since I don't feel at all tied to x86-64 (although I'm running it at present.)

    In short, x86-64 probably has highest coverage, most CPU optimizations, llvm optimizations, programs with MMX/SSE/AVX optimizations in them,e tc. ARM is a close second. PA-RISC, m68k, Itanium (before it was dropped entirely) had least coverage. Alpha, SPARC, MIPS, kind of in the middle. So just saying, given the general software ecosystem it was probably easier for them to get the 2-3x speedup on ARM compared to on SPARC (although SPARC is no slouch and it does have "Visual Instruction Set", some MMX/SSE/AVX-like instructions to use for that type of thing, so if something can take advantage of those but doesn't it'd get a nice speedup when it does.)

    As for China coverage -- what can I say? Having a country have to kind of establish this stuff from scratch is fascinating reading. It's not like they're neglecting coverage of western chip builders, they just are not having to get things going at this kind of pace so there's less to cover.

    As for the embargo backfiring? Well, so far it hasn't hurt them too much -- having to make chips with tech that is like 5-7nm instead of 3-5? Just not a big deal. I'd say it's backfired if they successfully get smaller-nm scale production working before the 5-7nm tech is too obsolete; it will have just pushed them into producing their own chip production technology where they otherwise would have probably just bought hardware from ASML. If they don't succeed in dong this, then it hasn't backfired and was successful.
    Reply
  • Swoosh1981
    hotaru251 said:
    they aren't backfiring they did this job exactly how they were meant to.

    Sanctions purpose is to limit access to soemthing via normal routes.

    It will never stop gray and black market routes nor is it ever expected to stop advancement (just slow them down).
    China has been trying to build its semiconductor industry for years without success, why? Because domestic companies prefer to buy more readily available advanced foreign chips. Sanction changed that. Now they understand that relying on foreign chips is a risky thing. For the first time, Chinese semiconductor players' businesses are booming, investment and buying orders are exploding. They have Trump and Biden to thank for. China has caught up in chip design, but still lagging in chip making capability. With huge investment in R&D, it is only a matter of time before China can catch up. They did it before when the west sanctioned the military arm export to China and when the US sanctioned the Chinese space industry. In both cases, China succeeded in catching up and become independent of foreign tech.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    Swoosh1981 said:
    hina has caught up in chip design
    it hasn't.

    their cpu's are not even last gen (let alone upcoming gen) nor are their gpu's anywhere near nvidia/amd's.

    have the made a great amount of progress? yes.

    Swoosh1981 said:
    With huge investment in R&D, it is only a matter of time before China can catch up.
    if $ was all it took we'd be a much further advanced species.

    and again if you read my quote I said "it was never meant to stop advancement just slowthem down"

    Every nation with time & money can eventually progress. Just a question of how long it takes.


    Swoosh1981 said:
    China succeeded in catching up and become independent of foreign tech.
    and they haven't yet.
    They still rely on foreign tech and just have to go through grey & black market.

    Theres a reason nvidia GPU's are so valuable in china & why you see all these articles about some foreign tech company being investigated for selling to china when they aren't supposed to due to sanctions.

    again sanction are never designed to halt a nations progress merely slow it down temporarily. Thats what they did. China will advance because of it (as bad as war and heightened tensions are...they are great motivations for national advancement as history has proven time and time again) which is a good thing in long run for them.
    Reply