The Great Divide: A Tale of Three Hardware Emulation Architectures

The article discusses the evolution of hardware emulation architectures, focusing on three main approaches: processor-based emulation, custom-FPGA-based emulation, and commercial-FPGA-based emulation. It traces the development of these architectures from the 1980s to the present, highlighting the challenges and innovations that shaped each approach. Processor-based emulation, custom-FPGA-based emulation, and commercial-FPGA-based emulation each have distinct trade-offs in terms of speed, scalability, and usability. The article also explores the impact of these architectures on the verification of modern AI-driven systems and semiconductor development.