Vitesse Semiconductor Standardizes on Magma RTL-to-GDSII Flow
Blast Chip and Blast Plan enable Vitesse to deliver higher performance and smaller area while minimizing the design cycle
CUPERTINO, Calif., May 15, 2002 -- Magma® Design Automation, Inc. (Nasdaq: LAVA), a provider of chip design solutions, today announced that Vitesse has standardized on Magma's RTL-to-GDSII integrated circuit (IC) implementation flow. Vitesse selected Magma as its electronic design automation (EDA) tool provider of choice after achieving better performance, reduced area and shorter design cycles on a number of designs using the Blast Chip™ integrated synthesis and place & route system and the Blast Plan™ hierarchical design solution.
"As a leading provider of next-generation networking and optical communications ICs, our customers expect a robust combination of high speed and integrated functionality," said Lou Tomasetta, president and CEO of Vitesse. "Having proven its ability to help us deliver for our customers, we are now leveraging the Magma-based design flow as a strong competitive advantage for our business."
"We are very pleased that Vitesse has confirmed that our integrated RTL-to-GDSII system can meet performance requirements that conventional point tool flows can't," said Rajeev Madhavan, chairman and chief executive officer of Magma Design Automation. "We've worked very closely with them to ensure their success and believe that their decision to standardize on our solution is a strong testament to our system's ability to address the semiconductor industry's toughest challenges."
The Vitesse RTL-to-GDSII Success
Blast Chip provided Vitesse with a complete RTL-to-GDSII design solution in a single executable. The production designs completed using Blast Chip include a 622 MHz, 100K-gate block, and another complex design with 500K placeable objects (approximately 2 million gates) and 160 RAM macros. Magma was able to meet timing and complete the design in just six weeks for Vitesse.
"With its gain-based synthesis approach and single data model, Blast Chip can reliably achieve timing closure and handle much larger blocks than traditional synthesis tools," said Bob Cutter, vice president of manufacturing at Vitesse. "These capabilities enabled us to avoid time-consuming and error-prone data transfers between independent synthesis and place & route tools and to optimally partition the design to simplify routing."
Vitesse Streamlines Its Hierarchical Design Flow
Blast Plan's hierarchical design capabilities were key to the successful completion of a Vitesse crossbar switch. The 17-million-gate, 311 MHz, 64 x 64 design contained nine unique blocks and five macros, some of which were instantiated multiple times in the design. Magma's patent-pending GlassBox™ abstraction allowed Vitesse to make changes to the design and obtain top-level timing updates in just 30 minutes. Using a 32-bit Linux machine and Magma's design flow, Vitesse performed top-level placement, routing, buffer insertion and clock tree generation. This powerful hardware and software solution allowed them to perform top-level assembly in real-time, running commands and quickly seeing the impact. Also, because Magma's unified datamodel is fully accessible through a Tcl interface, Vitesse was able to optimize the datapaths in the design, achieving nearly 100 percent utilization on each crossbar switch node.
About Magma
Magma software products enable chip designers to reduce the time required to design and produce complex integrated circuits in the communications, computing, consumer electronics, networking and semiconductor industries. Magma provides a single executable for RTL-to-GDSII chip design. The company's products, Blast Fusion™, Blast Chip™, Blast Plan™, Blast Noise™ and Blast Prototype™ utilize Magma's proprietary FixedTiming® methodology and single data model architecture to reduce the timing-closure iterations often required between the logic and physical processes in conventional IC design flows. Magma's Diamond SI™ also leverages the single data model architecture to provide an integrated, standalone platform for post-layout, sign-off-quality signal integrity verification.
Magma maintains headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., as well as sales and support facilities in Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego, Calif.; Boston, Mass.; Durham, N.C.; Laurys Station, Pa.; Austin and Dallas, Texas; Newcastle, Wash.; and in Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. The company's stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.
About Vitesse
Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation is a leading designer and supplier of innovative, high-performance integrated circuits (ICs) and optical modules used in next generation networking and optical communications equipment. The Company's products address the needs of Enterprise, Access, Metro, Core, and Optical Transport network equipment manufacturers who demand a robust combination of high-speed, high-service delivery and low-power dissipation in their products. In concert with its broad communications product portfolio, Vitesse also develops ICs for storage area networking and enclosure management. Vitesse is headquartered in Camarillo, Calif, and operates two fabrication facilities: one in Camarillo and one in Colorado Springs, Colo. Company and product information is available by calling 1-800-VITESSE or at www.vitesse.com.
Magma Design Automation, Inc.
Monica Marmie
Marketing Communications Manager
(408) 864-2027
monical@magma-da.com
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Magma and FixedTiming are registered trademarks and Blast Chip, Blast Fusion, Blast Noise, Blast Plan, Blast Prototype, Diamond SI and GlassBox are trademarks of Magma Design Automation. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies.
FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS:
Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release, including statements about the features and benefits of Magma's products and Vitesse's ability to leverage the Magma flow as a competitive advantage, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, including, but not limited to, the ability of Magma's products to produce the desired results and the abilities of Magma and Vitesse to keep pace with rapidly changing technology. Further discussion of these and other potential risk factors may be found in Magma's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended December 31, 2001 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") on February 14, 2002, and from time to time in Magma's SEC reports. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof. Magma disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.
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