In the race to deliver next-generation chips faster and smarter, semiconductor companies face a growing challenge: ensuring software and hardware work seamlessly together before the physical silicon even exists. Traditional validation approaches often rely on post-silicon testing, which can delay time-to-market, inflate costs, and limit design flexibility.
Pre-Silicon Software Validation is the process of developing, integrating, and testing firmware, drivers, and operating systems on virtual or emulated hardware and it has become essential. And this is where Globant’s expertise makes a measurable difference.
Bridging the Gap Between Design and Deployment
Globant helps semiconductor companies validate, debug, and optimize their software stacks early in the design cycle, long before tape-out. Our cross-disciplinary teams of embedded engineers, software architects, and DevOps specialists bring together deep knowledge in system-on-chip (SoC) emulation, virtualization, and performance profiling to accelerate software readiness.
With Globant as a partner, semiconductor companies can accelerate and achieve:
- Shorter time-to-market through early software bring-up
- Higher first-silicon success rates with validated firmware and drivers
- Improved system performance and reliability through proactive testing
Firmware Bring-Up: Bootloader, BSP, and HAL Validation in Emulation
One of the most critical steps in the pre-silicon phase is ensuring the firmware foundation, including bootloaders, Board Support Packages (BSP), and Hardware Abstraction Layers (HAL) is stable and optimized.
Getting bootloader and firmware bring-up right, early, and in emulated environments using tools like Cadence Palladium, Synopsys ZeBu, and Siemens Veloce, is key to success.
- Initialize SoCs and validate boot sequences
- Bring up BSPs and HALs on virtual or emulated hardware
- Identify low-level initialization bugs early in the cycle
This enables software teams to start integration and testing months before the actual hardware arrives.
Driver Development and Validation: PCIe, DDR, Ethernet, USB, and Beyond
Driver reliability refers to how effectively software interacts with complex hardware subsystems. Using emulation and FPGA-based prototypes, Globant engineers develop and validate drivers for interfaces such as PCIe, DDR, Ethernet, USB, and other critical IP blocks.
Our validation frameworks simulate real data transfers, latency, and throughput, helping identify timing mismatches, power management issues, and interoperability problems early. This ensures that when silicon arrives, the entire driver stack is production-ready.
OS Integration: Linux, Android, and RTOS Bring-Up
Globant helps teams bring operating systems to life on pre-silicon platforms, well before the hardware is ready. Whether it’s configuring Linux kernels, integrating Android frameworks, or porting real-time operating systems (RTOS) for embedded use cases, our engineers collaborate closely with hardware design teams to:
- Boot the OS on emulated SoC environments
- Validate memory maps, interrupt controllers, and peripheral drivers
- Conduct regression and stability testing under various workloads
This early integration enables faster validation of middleware, applications, and cloud connectivity.
Performance & Latency Profiling: Real-World Workload Testing
Performance tuning doesn’t have to wait until silicon samples are available. Using hardware emulation and virtual platforms, Globant helps semiconductor companies run realistic workloads and benchmark performance metrics, including latency, bandwidth, and power utilization.
By profiling and tuning software pre-silicon, we can:
- Detect bottlenecks and optimize system throughput
- Align software performance targets with silicon capabilities
- Provide feedback loops to design teams for iterative improvements
HW/SW Co-Verification: Ensuring Seamless System Integration
Pre-silicon validation is not just about individual components; it’s about how the entire system behaves under real conditions. Globant’s hardware/software co-verification methodology enables synchronized system-level testing across hardware IPs, firmware, drivers, and OS layers.
Using co-simulation and emulation tools, we help ensure:
- Accurate functional verification between software and RTL models
- End-to-end system validation using representative use cases
- Early identification of integration issues before tape-out
This integrated approach dramatically reduces post-silicon debug cycles and accelerates the path to production readiness.
Why Globant
Globant brings a unique combination of software innovation, digital engineering, and platform optimization to the semiconductor ecosystem. Our strength lies in merging deep software expertise with digital transformation capabilities, helping chipmakers build smarter, faster, and more scalable solutions.
Our value extends far beyond traditional engineering services:
- Software Development Excellence: Decades of experience building high-performance, cross-platform applications enable us to design and optimize complex embedded software stacks for pre-silicon environments.
- Digital Twins & Simulation Expertise: Our work in digital twins allows us to create virtual replicas of hardware systems, enabling real-time simulation, testing, and validation long before physical prototypes exist.
- Gaming & Graphics Optimization: Globant’s game development and porting expertise, working with leading platforms to optimize performance for specific hardware, translates directly to pre-silicon validation, where fine-tuned performance across CPUs, GPUs, and SoCs is essential.
- Platform-Specific Optimization: Our engineers specialize in tuning software for specific architectures, including ARM, x86, and custom accelerators, maximizing efficiency and power utilization across workloads.
- Testing & Quality Engineering Services: With comprehensive capabilities in test automation, performance benchmarking, and validation frameworks, Globant ensures robust, repeatable, and scalable verification pipelines for semiconductor software stacks.
By uniting our experience across industries from industrial automation to gaming, from cloud to chip-level performance, Globant empowers semiconductor companies to accelerate their pre-silicon development cycles, validate systems with confidence, and deliver high-quality products faster to market. Curious how this comes to life in practice? Visit Globant’s High Tech Studio and see how we help semiconductor teams move faster and smarter.
