Libraries are freed up for design shrinks

Global Unichip has used Liberate to retarget a 90nm library from 1.2 to 1V.

Global Unichip Corporation, a dedicated full service SoC design foundry based in Taiwan, has adopted the Liberate library characterisation product from Altos Design Automation.

Global Unichip, which provides design solutions ranging from silicon-proven intellectual property (IPs) to complex system-on-chip designs, is using Liberate to recharacterise 90nm low power standard cell library at a lower supply voltage.

The recharacterised library is to be applied to portable applications.

Jim Lai, COO and President at Global Unichip said: "Global Unichip has been focusing on the low power design methodology as leakage escalates in the deep submicron process and the application power requirement has been increasingly stringent".

"Other than developing the design methodologies from architecture, RTL level, we also work with library and EDA vendors to come up with a comprehensive low power solution from library level".

"In low power designs, it is common to use a lower voltage than the standard supply or to have multiple supply voltages".

"To avoid interpolation errors, it is critical that the libraries being used to implement the design are re-characterised at these voltages".

Lai continued: "We selected Altos Liberate to perform characterisation because of its speed, ease of use and the excellent correlation between Liberate's results and the Liberty files provided by our library vendor".

"Standard cell libraries come characterised to a fixed set of operating conditions (process, voltage and temperature (PVT))".

"However designs that operate under different PVT conditions should be re-characterised to avoid potential chip failures due to inaccurate analysis".

said Jim McCanny, Altos CEO: "Global Unichip was able to leverage Liberate's fast performance and ease of use to quickly retarget their library vendor's 90nm library from 1.2 to 1V without requiring a major computer farm or a team of characterisation specialists".

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