CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
25 May 2005
Product News
Magma Develops Low-Power Reference Flow for IBM-Chartered 90-Nanometer Process Platform
Magma® Design Automation Inc. announced its collaboration with IBM and Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing to offer an RTL-to-GDSII reference flow for low-power designs targeting the IBM-Chartered 90-nanometer (nm) low-power common process platform. The low-power reference flow enables designers to develop low-power systems on chip (SoCs) while leveraging the flexibility of dual-source manufacturing at IBM's and Chartered's 300-millimeter facilities and is expected to be available by the end of second quarter 2005. The IBM-Chartered 90nm common platform is already supported by Magma's IBM-Chartered Design Enablement Kit for the base process platform.
The RTL-to-GDSII low-power common reference flow leverages Blast PowerT and Blast RailT NX in addition to Magma's IC implementation products. Key capabilities include transient analysis, decap insertion, automatic voltage island implementation, concurrent multiple threshold optimization, clock gating, power gating and multi-mode analysis and optimization. ARM® Artisan® MetroT low-power libraries are used for the flow development.
"Our strong working relationship with Magma continues to play an important role in developing the ecosystem for the IBM-Chartered 90nm common process platform," said Kevin Meyer, vice president of worldwide marketing at Chartered. "Magma's unified database approach and focus on complete integration is a key element of their low-power reference flow and compelling value proposition for SoC designers."
"We are very pleased to expand our platform offerings with the Magma low-power reference flow," said Steve Longoria, vice president, Semiconductor Technology Platform for IBM. "As our ecosystem continues to expand, it is critical that we offer our customers quality choices for their marketplace; low power is clearly a key element of our platform strategy."
"Minimizing and managing power in 90nm and 65nm designs are increasingly difficult," said Michael Ma, vice president of foundry and IP relationships at Magma. "We're pleased to be working with IBM and Chartered to address this critical design challenge as part of their 90nm common process platform."
Each component of the Magma system is based on a unified data model and uses the same timing, power and signal integrity analysis and optimization engines. Blast Rail NX and Blast Power are fully integrated into the Magma RTL-to-GDSII flow and provide a correct-by-construction low-power design flow. Blast Rail NX provides integrated power analysis and planning, voltage-drop analysis, voltage-drop-induced delay analysis, and electromigration analysis on rail wires and vias, enabling designers to maintain power integrity in their designs. Blast Power provides a comprehensive solution for power optimization and management. Optimal power management is enabled throughout the implementation flow through power-aware synthesis, physical optimization and routing, enabling designers to minimize power and ensure uniform power distribution. Blast Power enables designers to make continuous power, timing and area tradeoffs throughout the flow to deliver optimized power, better performance and smaller area.
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