SAN JOSE, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- Feb 06, 2006 --
Lightspeed, the leading mask reconfigurable
logic array provider, announces its new name: Lightspeed Logic, Inc. This
name change heralds Lightspeed's conversion from a fabless Structured ASIC
company to an intellectual property (IP) provider. Lightspeed provides
standard-cell-based logic array IP for SoC, ASSP and ASIC designs. This
mask reconfigurable logic array, portable to any fab / foundry, delivers
reduced time to market, reduced design risk and design cost, and increased
yield compared to traditional standard cell designs.
Support for 130nm and 90nm technology is available today with 65nm support
available in the first quarter of 2006.
Chip designs suffer from increasingly prohibitive NRE costs, longer design
cycles, and increased risk of not achieving first-time silicon success.
Lightspeed's mask reconfigurable logic array can reduce chip development
time by four to six months, with performance and density near that of
standard cell.
"Our mask reconfigurable logic array offers customers the flexibility to
optimize the number of customization masks on their chips for performance
and density tradeoffs," said Dave Holt, Lightspeed's CEO. "Lightspeed
continues to demonstrate industry-leading density and performance, in the
range of 80 percent that of traditional standard cell, making our solution
very attractive to IDMs, fabless semiconductor companies, and system
manufacturers with in-house COT designs."
Logic Array Advantages
Modern semiconductor processes and their standard cell libraries are
continually tuned together to enhance yield. Lightspeed's logic array
leverages this ongoing work, as Lightspeed's logic array is built from the
pre-characterized, pre-qualified standard cells for each process.
Competitive solutions are all built of custom gates or cells that do not
gain this yield improvement advantage, are of much lower density and
performance, and require dramatically higher investment to port to a new
process.
By basing a design on Lightspeed's logic array, designers benefit from
90-95 percent of signal nets being immune to signal-integrity problems in
the finished chip. Having small, regular, repeated structures at the
design layers with the finest pitches enables RET (resolution enhancement
technology) for all logic, enhancing yield. Lightspeed's logic array uses
buffers instead of high-drive strength cells, further enhancing
signal-integrity compliance and reducing electro-migration analysis. The
logic array also results in a more uniform and more easily verifiable power
grid. All of these features result in reduced risk and enhanced yield for
the chip.
Customer IP blocks can efficiently be embedded in the logic array to
differentiate the customer's product. With the reconfigurable Lightspeed
logic array, the customer can store inventory in a wafer bank, eliminating
the need of doing an all-mask revision for each version of a chip, thus
lowering inventory risk, development time, and cost.
In addition to their mask reconfigurable logic array, Lightspeed offers
mask reconfigurable I/O and embedded test, giving designers a complete
package for developing high-performance mask reconfigurable cell-based
chips. The I/O can support a wide range of signaling standards in single
PHY and a wide range of system interfaces. AutoTest® embedded test
architecture provides 98+ percent stuck-at fault coverage with no
Design-for-Test (DFT) restrictions and with no user test-vector generation.
About Lightspeed Logic
Lightspeed Logic is the leader in mask reconfigurable logic arrays, I/O and
test. Lightspeed's mask reconfigurable logic array is uniquely
standard-cell based, enabling rapid deployment on any semiconductor process
and providing industry leading performance and density. Culminating nine
years of mask-reconfigurable research and development, Lightspeed
significantly reduces development time and cost for SoC, ASSP and ASIC
designs.
For more information visit http://www.lightspeed.com/
Media Contacts:
Lightspeed Logic
Michael Sydow
(408) 616-3237
Email Contact
Cain Communications
Patrick Corcoran
503-284-1563
Email Contact