Sequence Low-Power Design Seminar Attracts Top Japanese Electronics Companies; 29 Major Japanese Consumer Electronics Companies Attend Event Co-Sponsored By CoWare, Forte, HP
SANTA CLARA, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Dec. 15, 2005—
A recent seminar in Tokyo on low-power design issues and
strategies sponsored by Sequence Design, CoWare, Forte Design Systems,
and HP attracted chip designers from 29 major Japanese electronics
companies, racing to solve major problems affecting chip design for
consumer, mobile, and highly integrated devices. The seminar focused
on four areas: predicting power consumption early in the design cycle,
reduction of switching power consumption, reduction of leakage power,
and efficient power-grid design.
Keynote speaker Professor Takayasu Sakurai, Center for
Collaborative Research, University of Tokyo, stated that power issues
are becoming a real threat to the continued advance of Moore's Law.
Leakage power in particular, he said, will rise dramatically in the
next decade as power supplies shrink and can represent nearly one-half
of power consumption in 90nm designs. He examined a number of steps
being developed to control leakage, including power gating of designs,
MTCMOS (Multi-Threshold CMOS) and other advanced process technologies,
and several "power-aware" architectures under development in Japan.
Cradle Technologies' Amjad Qureshi, director of hardware
engineering, described his experience developing a low-power design
flow for a 0.13 micron, multi-million gate CT3600 MDSP (Multi-Core
DSP) product with 24 processing cores. He recommends tackling power
issues as early in the design cycle as possible and cited his
company's use of Sequence's PowerTheater to architect the RTL code,
resulting in a 30 percent reduction in power consumption. Cradle, a
fabless semiconductor company providing MDSPs for video and imaging
systems, is a leader in the fast-growth security and surveillance
industry and prides itself on achieving low power consumption across
its entire product family.
NEC Electronics' Kotaro Hachiya delivered a talk on power-noise
verification and NEC Electronics' experience using Sequence's CoolTime
for dynamic power grid analysis.
"Companies attending this seminar are in the three hottest
semiconductor markets today: consumer, mobile, and high integration,"
said Sequence president and CEO, Vic Kulkarni. "Consumer applications
are driven by cost, so they must produce the lowest cost, lowest power
package possible. Mobile applications are driven by battery life, so
power consumption must be reduced as much as possible. And
high-integration devices in communications, computing, and networking
are burning up from their own heat so they must look for ways to scale
down power consumption. Semiconductor companies are investing heavily
in these markets and are looking for partners that can help them
manage power because it is critical to their success. The record
attendance at this seminar proves just how important power is becoming
in semiconductor design."
In addition to real-world case studies from invited speakers, the
sponsors presented advances in EDA software and hardware specific to
low-power design: Sequence addressed physical power optimization and
power-grid integrity; Forte covered a power-driven methodology for
ESL-to-netlist design flows; and CoWare discussed issues relating to
ESL power management.
About Sequence
Sequence Design, Inc. enables SoC designers to bring higher
performance and power-aware integrated circuits quickly to
fabrication. Sequence's power and signal-integrity EDA software give
its customers -- including nine of the top 10 semiconductor companies
worldwide -- the competitive advantage necessary to excel in
aggressive technology markets, despite demanding complexity and
time-to-market issues of nanometer design.
Sequence has worldwide development and field service operations.
The company was recently named by Reed Electronics as one of the top
10 companies to watch in the electronics industry, and selected as one
of high-tech's Top 100 by siliconindia magazine. Sequence is privately
held. Additional information is available at sequencedesign.com.
All trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their
respective owners.
Contact:
Sequence Public Relations
Jim Lochmiller, 541-821-3438
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