Active Assist

Optimize your ARM designs and reduce risk, with end-to-end project assistance from ARM experts.

Why Active Assist?

Active Assist is a premium expert review service that helps you optimize your ARM SoC designs, using advice from the most experienced ARM engineers in the industry. Active Assist boosts your team's ARM technology expertise, helping them design more effectively, so you can launch products faster without compromising quality.

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Benefits

By increasing the efficiency of communication and knowledge transfer between ARM engineers and your team, Active Assist helps to:

Improve the quality of your design
Shorten your design cycle and reduce time-to-market
Reduce project risk

Some Existing Customers

FAQs

What distinguishes Active Assist from Training or Support?

Support and Training are based on explaining what an ARM product can do and how to integrate it, whilst Active Assist reviews all the ARM products in your implementation to ensure they are used correctly and in line with your design goals.
Why do I need an Active Assist agreement before the first engagement starts?

This agreement is required to cover the disclosure of information which takes place during an engagement.
What happens when I take an Active Assist?

For a Design Review, there are three stages: Preparation, On-site Visit and Report. For an Implementation Assist, the visit is replaced by off-site consultancy involving a series of conference calls. The preparation stage is necessary in both cases to ensure best use is made of time spent in the main consultancy phase.
How long does an Active Assist engagement last?

Assuming the Active Assist agreement is in place, an engagement can start within a few weeks of the request. The length of the engagement will vary depending of the type of Active Assist service; a Design Review typically takes 3 to 4 days on-site, whilst an Implementation Assist is conducted over a period of months. The report is published two weeks after the engagement has concluded.
What information does the Active Assist report contain?

The Active Assist report provides a summary of the project and a detailed account of the issues, recommendations and observations made during the review.
What products can be covered by an Active Assist?

Active Assist is restricted to ARM technology. The preparation stage of the Active Assist will identify which products you are using and ensure the right experts are assigned to cover those. Please contact us to discuss any special requirements you may have.
Who delivers an Active Assist?

Active Assist reviews are delivered by senior ARM engineers from the Product Support team or the Product Development team, chosen for their relevant knowledge and experience, and backed up by the Product Support team.
What guarantees does ARM make?

ARM cannot guarantee that a Design Review will produce perfectly working silicon. ARM cannot guarantee that an Implementation Assist will exceed PPA targets. ARM can guarantee that a design will be thoroughly inspected by ARM experts who have worked with many successful designs.
Who do I contact to find out more?

Use our general enquiry form to send us a message.

Active Assist is designed to address project 'Hot Spots' in a typical SoC design flow:

Active Assist Hot Spot graphic

Active Assist Options

Design Review helps you get your designs ready for implementation quicker. ARM experts review key aspects of your ARM-based SoC design on-site, and provide best practice engineering advice on what you need to do to progress.

Scope: Architecture, RTL, TrustZone Ready and Mali Driver.
Length: 2 to 4 days for the on-site review.
Method: on-site face-to-face review; off-site support and report writing.
Deliverables: detailed report documenting topics discussed and any recommendations made.

Process:

Preparation

You tell us about your requirements by submitting a questionnaire.
ARM selects the appropriate reviewers.
We jointly agree the agenda for the review.

On-site Visit *

Two senior ARM engineers visit you on-site and conduct open discussions with your engineers.
The review takes place, identifying issues with system architecture, design, topology, and any potential bottlenecks.

* (2-4 days)

Report

ARM provides ongoing off-site support to close issues raised during the on-site meetings.
ARM sends you a detailed report of the review within two weeks of the on-site visit taking place.

Types of Active Assist Design Review:

Architecture Design Review
ARM experts visit you on-site to review your proposed system, looking at the system topology, potential bottlenecks and power management considerations, providing general best-practice advice.
Physical Implementation Design Review
ARM experts offer a best practice review of your implementation flow and intermediate results, followed by an on-site review of logs just before you proceed to the tape-out stage.
RTL Design Review
ARM experts visit you on-site to verify the SoC design of your ARM IP at the RTL level, covering for instance: signal connectivity, system coherency, correct implementation and system performance.
TrustZone Ready Design Review
The TrustZone Ready Design Review helps you to prepare the TBSA (Trusted Base System Architecture) compliance checklist, which will aid in future certification methods. This service also includes a full RTL Design Review, to ensure your ARM subsystem is integrated correctly.
NEON Software Assist
The NEON Software Assist targets developers seeking to get the most out of ARM’s NEON media processing architecture. Prior to coming onsite we will review samples of your key algorithms and optimization requirements and then present a custom NEON training course including workshop sessions developed using your code.