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Estimating the economic viability of an IC design early in the design cycle is a challenge. As an aid, Giga Scale IC's comprehensive IC economic-analysis engine lets designers transform a high-level design specification into a complete IC budgetary quotation.

The economic analysis engine is now available as an upgrade to the company's InCyte chip-estimation tool. Designers can download a free, time-unlimited version of InCyte at ChipEstimate.com.

Building on InCyte's technical estimation results of die size, power, and leakage, the engine gives designers an understanding of both the technical and economic viability of a proposed chip design. Its comprehensive analysis accounts for yielded silicon-die cost, IC package recommendation and cost, test and assembly cost, nonrecurring engineering (NRE) costs, return-on-investment analysis on IP and NRE costs, and other factors.

Also, the engine performs an IC-lifecycle analysis. With it, designers can forecast and account for mask respins, increasing yields, and decreasing wafer and package costs.

The engine is available as an upgrade to ChipEstimate.com users and to enterprise-class InCyte customers. The InCyte upgrade prices start at $2000/month.

Giga Scale IC
www.chipestimate.com