|
Artisan Components Introduces Memories With Redundancy
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 14, 2001--
Artisan Components Inc., (Nasdaq:ARTI), a leading provider of
physical libraries, today announced the introduction of its
Flex-Repair(TM) memory solutions. Flex-Repair solutions provide
on-chip redundancy and repair capabilities that improve the
performance and yield of memory intensive designs. These new memory
solutions are being offered at no charge to the more than 700
companies in Artisan's user community. Until now, the use of
repairable memory solutions has been limited to a small number of
high-end design teams that could afford the expensive NRE and royalty
costs associated with this type of ``star'' IP. Artisan's Flex-Repair
solutions make the next generation of this capability instantly
affordable and broadly available.
Flex-Repair
Many complex system chips require unique strategies for embedded
memory test and repair. Among other factors, a designer's choice of
memory-repair solution depends on the amount of embedded memory, the
area of the memory repair circuitry, the level of process maturity,
the yield characteristics of the specific foundry and memory bit
cells, the overall memory margin philosophy, the anticipated
production volumes and the silicon cost. In addition, efficiently
adding repair capability to a large number of small to medium memories
is substantially more difficult than adding repair capability to a
large, monolithic memory block. Artisan's Flex-Repair solutions
provide designers with the flexibility necessary to meet the unique
needs of each project.
First-generation embedded memory repair solutions were based on
classical DRAM and SRAM component approaches. These solutions relied
on coarse granularity redundancy, spare memory banks, word arrays,
column arrays or combinations of these. These approaches often include
complex repair and switching logic that can add substantial functional
risk, area, power and delay to the overall memory structure. These
approaches are also characterized by a lack of flexibility. In
general, memory repair architectures that were ideal for commodity
memory chips are poorly suited for use in embedded memory solutions.
Artisan's next-generation Flex-Repair memories provide designers
with the ability to build only the repair capability needed for a
specific design. The solution can be as fine-grained as desired and
can fully utilize built-in self-test solutions from a large number of
third-party vendors. Flex-Repair memory solutions provide the ability
to repair a wide range of process related failure mechanisms including
single-bit failures, adjacent-bit failures, column failures,
adjacent-column failures, multiple-bit failures, single- and
multiple-row failures and multiple-column failures, single- and
multiple-word failures, etc. Projected yield improvements are up to
80% depending on process and bit-cell maturity and the total amount of
memory on chip. Artisan's Flex-Repair solutions are fully compatible
with leading manufacturers' test and repair flows.
Memory repairs can be made at test time by programming Artisan's
on-chip fuse bank or can be made on chip power up by programming
on-chip repair registers, thus providing a complete stand-alone
built-in self-repair capability. Flex-Repair memory solutions are easy
to use, cost and area efficient and meet the high-quality standards
that designers have come to expect from Artisan Components.
``This is what Artisan is all about,'' says Mark Templeton,
president and CEO of Artisan Components. ``We create fresh, up-to-date
design solutions and then drive those solutions into the broadest
possible usage. Several of our highest-volume customers have worked
with us on the development of our Flex-Repair product and we are
really excited to be able to offer this solution freely to our user
community. I believe that this product has the potential to establish
a design standard on the same level as our other offerings, including
our SAGE-X standard cell libraries and our very widely used embedded
memory and IO library solutions.''
Availability
Artisan's Flex-Repair Memory product will be distributed
free-of-charge to design teams with up-to-date Artisan end-user
license agreements. General release of the product is scheduled for
the third quarter of 2001. For more information about Flex-Repair
Memory Products or to enroll in Artisan's free library program,
designers should visit Artisan via the Worldwide Web at
www.artisan.com, contact an Artisan customer service representative at
1-877-ARTILIB or e-mail Artisan at artilib@artisan.com.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including,
without limitation, statements regarding the performance and
capability of Flex-Repair, its expected release date, and market
acceptance of such product. These statements are subject to various
risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, deployment
delays, industry adoption, product capability and performance, revenue
recognition and collection, demand for semiconductors generally and
end user products that incorporate semiconductors, and general
economic conditions. We refer you to the documents that Artisan files
from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in
particular its respective annual report on form 10-K and its quarterly
report on form 10-Q.
About Artisan Components
Artisan Components, Inc. (Nasdaq:ARTI) is a world leader in
intellectual property (IP) components, providing high-quality
solutions for many of the world's leading semiconductor foundries,
integrated device manufacturers, ASIC vendors and IC design teams.
Artisan's Process-Perfect(TM) memory generators, standard cell and I/O
libraries are optimized to achieve the full-speed, density and
low-power potential of each semiconductor process. Each product is
verified using the industry's most comprehensive QA and validation
procedures and delivered ready to use with a complete set of views and
models supporting leading design tools. Artisan's headquarters are
located at 1195 Bordeaux Drive, Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1201. World Wide
Web address: http://www.artisan.com.
Note to Editors: Artisan Components is a registered trademark and
Process-Perfect, SAGE-X and Flex-Repair are trademarks of Artisan
Components, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the
property of their respective owners.
Contact:
Artisan Components, Inc., Sunnyvale
Claudia Natalia, 408/548-3172 (Corporate Communications)
claudia@artisan.com
Joyce Chowla, 408/548-3122 (Investor Relations)
joyce@artisan.com
| Popularity Rating for this story - |
|
|
|
CaféTalk |
