Hardware emulation
Hardware emulation is the process of imitating the behavior of one or more pieces of hardware (typically a system under design) with another piece of hardware, typically a special purpose emulation system. The goal is normally debugging of the system being designed. Often an emulator is fast enough to be plugged into a working target system in place of a yet-to-be-built chip, so the whole system can be debugged with live data. This is a specific case of in-circuit emulation. The largest fraction of silicon integrated circuit respins are due, at least in part, to functional errors. Thus, comprehensive functional verification is key to reducing development costs and delivering a product on time. Functional verification of a design is most often performed using logic simulation and/or prototyping. There are advantages and disadvantages to each and often both are used. Logic simulation is easy, accurate, flexible, and low cost.
