Exsedia gets R&D grant KUALA LUMPUR: Exsedia Sdn Bhd said it has been awarded R&D funding under the Multimedia Super Corridor Research and Development Grant Scheme (MGS) for a project involving the development of system-level design methodologies. The result of the project will be EDA (electronic design automation) products that will be introduced over the next two years, Exsedia (http://www.exsedia.com) said in a statement. One of the methodologies to be explored is SystemC, an open source hardware design and verification language based on C++ that allows engineers to apply powerful software techniques -- such as object-oriented programming -- to the challenges of system modelling and verification. Exsedia claimed that its flagship EDA tool, the Nimbus toolset, is the only product in its class that supports design capture, verification, simulation and code translation in one environment. Its research and development (R&D) project aims to develop a completely new methodology for system-level design, with simulation and verification capabilities. Research will be spearheaded by Exsedia at the company's headquarters in collaboration with several local and foreign universities. “We are excited to be venturing into this kind of research in Malaysia,” said Exsedia chief executive officer Razak Bahrom. Interest in system-level design has increased in the last two years as chip designers worldwide face the challenge of keeping track of exponential increases in data volume and design complexity, Exsedia said. To address the level of complexity limited by existing EDA tools, the next step for designers is to move up to the next level of abstraction, which is at the architectural or system level, the company said. Through the MGS project, Exsedia will join a growing number of EDA vendors providing solutions in system-level design and verification.