Design management speeds sensor development

TransChip is using MatrixOne's Synchronicity Developer and Publisher Suites to speed development through design management and reuse.

TransChip is using MatrixOne's Synchronicity Developer and Publisher Suites to speed development through design management and reuse.

TransChip is a leading developer of highly integrated CMOS image sensors for mobile phones.

AST, the local Synchronicity representative and support centre, implemented the Developer and Publisher Suite solutions at TransChip.

TransChip is taking advantage of the Synchronicity Developer Suite, the leading IC design collaboration and management solution, to raise the productivity of its engineers.

TransChip is also using the Synchronicity Publisher Suite to implement and support company-wide design reuse.

The Publisher Suite is the de facto standard for moving and managing designs in and between companies.

"In our multidisciplinary design environment, we must use a robust methodology to manage our database, track changes and release our IP, both internally and externally", commented Eli Assoolin, CAD and Backend Manager at TransChip.

"The Synchronicity suite of tools gave us a good solution that incorporated all aspects of chip design and firmware, helping us to maintain excellent product quality and meet our schedules".

"To have become so successful so quickly there are obviously many bright people working hard at TransChip", noted Paul Gibson, MatrixOne's Vice-President of Electronics, EMEA.

"We are very pleased that our solutions have worked so well and have enabled innovators like TransChip to become even more productive".

The Synchronicity Developer Suite bundles ProjectSync, which raises design predictability with multiple-site project and issue tracking and communications, and DesignSync, which boosts productivity by making design data available to the entire project team, no matter where they are located, in a safe and managed manner.

Both tools support repeatable design best practices and so helped TransChip win its recent ISO9001:2000 quality certification.

TransChip manages all the project related files with DesignSync, including RTL, marketing materials, specs, software, board layouts and models.

As image sensors have significant analogue and full custom content, TransChip also takes advantage of DesignSync DFII, which is directly integrated into the Cadence user interfaces and has special awareness of the unique Virtuoso file behaviours.

With DesignSync, TransChip engineers also check finished designs directly into their Publisher Suite design reuse system.

This maintains version control integrity, which makes support easier because the history of a design is more readily determinable and enables management to better judge the use and value of development efforts.

TransChip engineers use another Developer Suite tool, the Hierarchical Configuration Manager (HCM) to manage the project in the top-down, block-based manner in which they plan it.

With HCM blocks can contain blocks, release management operations can be performed on any level of the hierarchy and referenced blocks can be held in a Publisher Suite design reuse system.

The Publisher Suite is widely used for design reuse and the distribution and support of semiconductor intellectual property.

The Publisher Suite contains the IP Gear Catalog to store and present reusable designs and the IP Gear Helpdesk and Knowledge Base as a rich support environment.

For many companies, engineering costs are becoming prohibitively expensive on large, custom chip developments and massive design reuse is proving to be one of the best techniques to keep these projects profitable.

The Publisher Suite design reuse infrastructure raises the productivity of TransChip engineers by enabling them to find, evaluate and securely download blocks of already complete designs through any web browser, then get the support they need to truly take advantage of the existing designs.

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