GUC Adds Apache’s RedHawk to their 65nm Signoff Flow

August 8, 2007; 02:29 AM
Apache Design Solutions, the technology leader in power signoff and a provider of complete silicon integrity platform solutions for system-on-chip (SoC), analog, and system designs, today announced that Global Unichip Corp. (GUC; TW:3443), a leading SoC design foundry, has added RedHawk power integrity solution as part of their signoff requirements for all designs at 65nm and below. Over the past two years, RedHawk helped GUC perform dynamic IR prevention prior to tape-out, which resulted in very few yield losses due to IR drop.

“Meeting customers’ needs in deep-submicron technology has been our main focus. Apache’s power integrity solutions deliver accuracy, performance, and ease-of-use required for identifying and correcting difficult design challenges prior to tape-out,” said Jim Lai, president and COO of GUC. “By adding Apache’s RedHawk into the signoff flow, we will provide an even better quality and robust flow than ever, and will have a higher degree of confidence in achieving silicon success.”

“Power signoff has become a must have requirement as designs move towards 65nm and below,” said Dian Yang, vice president of product management at Apache. “RedHawk has been adopted by 80% of the top IDM and fabless semiconductor companies as their power signoff solution. We are pleased to be a part of GUC’s signoff flow and to continue our collaboration in meeting upcoming challenges in low power design analysis and optimization.”

About Global Unichip Corp.

Global Unichip Corp. (GUC), a dedicated full service SoC (System On Chip) Design Foundry based in Taiwan, was founded in 1998. GUC provides total solutions from silicon-proven IPs to complex time-to-market SoC turnkey services. GUC is committed to providing the most advanced and the best price-performance silicon solutions through close partnerships with TSMC, GUC major shareholders, and other key packaging and testing power houses. With state of the art EDA tools, advanced methodologies, and an experienced technical team, GUC ensures the highest quality and lowest risks to achieve first silicon success. GUC has established a global customer base throughout Greater China, Japan, Korea, North America, and Europe. Its track-record in complex SoC designs has brought benefits to customers in time to revenue at the lowest risk. For more information, please visit http://www.globalunichip.com

About RedHawk

RedHawk is a full-chip Vectorless Dynamic™ physical power integrity solution for SoC power closure sign-off of 130nm, 90nm, and 65nm designs. Correlated with silicon measurements and SPICE, RedHawk addresses dynamic power issues such as simultaneous switching output (SSO) for core, memory, clock, and I/O, as well as effects of on-chip inductance, package RLC, and decoupling capacitance. RedHawk delivers transistor-level accuracy with cell-based capacity, performance, and ease-of-use.

With RedHawk, designers can identify dynamic “hot spots,” examine the impact on timing, accurately pinpoint the cause of dynamic voltage drop, and automatically repair the source of supply noise. RedHawk enables designers to reach power closure sign-off for high performance SoCs, including those utilizing advanced low-power design techniques such as leakage current control, MTCMOS (power-gating), multiple voltage domains, and multiple threshold transistors.

About Apache Design Solutions

Apache delivers the leading power sign-off solution adopted by 80% of top IDMs, fabless semiconductor companies, and foundries, as well as complete platform solution for silicon integrity of SoC, analog-IP, and system designs. Apache’s innovative platform considers all sources of noise that impacts the design--such as power, signal, package / system I/O, substrate, and temperature--Apache’s silicon integrity platform enables designers of leading networking, wireless, communication, consumer, and semiconductor companies to detect, fix, and prevent design weaknesses that can result in reduced yield or failed silicon / system. Apache’s vendor-neutral solutions enable designers to adopt any industry-standard physical design flow and are in production use by over 40 customers worldwide. For more information, visit www.apache-da.com.

Apache Design Solutions, NSPICE, RedHawk, PsiWinder, Sahara, Sentinel, and Vectorless Dynamic are trademarks of Apache Design Solutions, Inc.