Progressive Refinement for Israeli ASICs

Avnet ASIC Israel has selected the Monterey planning, prototyping and implementation tool suite for its latest SoC designs.

Avnet ASIC Israel (AAI) has selected the Monterey planning, prototyping and implementation tool suite for its latest SoC designs.

"Most of our designs contain a substantial amount of both internally and externally developed IP", said Nadav Ben Ezer, Managing Director of AAI.

"We have found Monterey planning and prototyping capabilities to be indispensable for designs that contain both hard and soft IP cores.

With the Monterey Progressive Refinement approach, we are able to very quickly analyse and determine critical aspects such as which process technology to use and the chip-level design plan".

AAI has been active in the Israeli ASIC market for the past 15 years and is one of the most established ASIC design centres in the country.

AAI has successfully taped out more than 100 designs, most of them complex SoC ASICs integrating such IP as ARM CPUs and subsystems, DSP cores, analogue cells and other IP cores in technologies ranging from 1.0 to 0.18-micron six-layer metal designs.

The company's customer profile includes large established companies as well as many startups targeting a variety of market segments such as communications, consumer electronics, and automotive.

AAI is developing its Progressive Refinement flow with the Monterey IC Wizard hierarchical design planner, Sonar physical synthesis and prototyper, and Dolphin physical implementation system.

IC Wizard allows simultaneous exploration of multiple chip-level design plans.

Sonar provides prototyping, analysis, and validation of those plans.

Dolphin completes the flow by performing the final physical implementation and GDSII tape out.

The Progressive Refinement flow is intended for use on AAI's most advanced nanometre designs.

"AAI immediately recognised the value of Monterey's Progressive Refinement technology for their complex SoC designs", said Sol Gradman, General Manager of Monterey Design in Israel.

"With the Monterey products, they can make informed decisions that ultimately determine the success or failure of the design.

They can avert bad decisions early in the process mistakes that might have serious consequences later in the design process".

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