PowerPro MG adds memory gating to the ME pin so it determines, for individual memories, situations outside of this generic “idle” mode in which there may be opportunities to shut down memories. In this way, the light-sleep modes for each individual memory become more frequent and longer in duration. It amounts to much finergrained control of memory shutdown.
IMPLEMENTING BEST PRACTICES
With SoC design complexity growing rapidly, who’s got time to cobble together design flows from various vendors? The latest effort from Synopsys at an all-inclusive design system, the Lynx Design System, is based on the company’s production design flow, which rests on a foundation of best practices and recommended methodologies for the best ways to drive tools such as Design Compiler. On top of that foundation are more than 45 built-in methodologies that cut across tools.
These methodologies address facets of design such as power management and design for manufacturing/design for yield (DFM/DFY), as well as consistent timing modeling. The system also incorporates the body of work that Synopsys has completed with ARM on a reference flow for ARM’s soft processor intellectual property (IP).
The flow is optimized at technology nodes down to 32 nm. It has been tested at various nodes at multiple foundries with validated libraries and tech files. More than 60 specific tapeout checks are specified. For example, it’s verified that via optimization rates conform to a foundry’s rules.
A key element of the flow is the runtime manager, a Synopsys GUI-based application that enables easy drag-and-drop configuration of the flow and its constituent tools. Want to skip a signal integrity check in a preliminary run? It’s simply a matter of literally cutting it out of a flow diagram. Doing so causes the flow to automatically reconfigure itself to account for the deletion.
Another important part of the Lynx Design System is what Synopsys calls the Foundry-Ready System (FRS). Most design projects pull together blocks of IP from numerous sources. These blocks aren’t necessarily compatible with each other. The FRS uses built-in utilities to check the blocks to make sure views are consistent.
When it comes to tapeouts, the FRS is equipped with process-specific methodologies and checks that are configurable to specific foundries and design requirements. A final key element of the Lynx system is the management cockpit, which provides transparency into the design flow. Running on the design manager’s PC and/ or designers’ Unix workstations, the cockpit automatically collects metrics on more than 50 aspects of the design flow.