As in any industry, standards in
design automation can be of
tremendous benefit to designers—and that's especially so in the realm of
design data. The efforts to create a common format for power-related data, initially spearheaded by Cadence and other
EDA, IP, and semiconductor vendors, is
now under the aegis of the Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2).
The initiative's goal is to provide a
mechanism through which a power architecture can be defined early in the
design cycle and then carried through to
implementation using a single view. The
resulting Common Power Format (CPF) 1.0 specification was approved as an Si2
spec last month. Work to evolve the spec carries on through
Si2's Low Power
Coalition (LPC).
But standards and data formats
don't get chips
designed on their
own merits. Tools
must use the standards and formats
for them to be of
value. Cadence has
answered the call
with a complete
low-power design,
verification, and implementation flow
that lets an engineering team, or groups
of teams, leverage the CPF to capture low-power design intent at the outset of
the design process and then propagate it
throughout the flow.
The CPF makes it possible for the fragmented data describing the intent for a
complex IC's power architecture to be
read and understood by all tools. Consider the case of logic design.
Whether it's formal analysis, test-bench simulation, equivalence checking,
synthesis, or place and route, all of the
tools in the flow can base their understanding of logical design intent through
use of a single view. (Generally speaking,
that's the hardware-description-language representation.)
The CPF does the same for the power-architecture side of the design (). In the process, it also eliminates
the need to cobble together a power-aware flow through tedious hand-integration work.
The Incisive Design Team and Enterprise simulators, the Incisive Design
Team Manager and Enterprise Manager,
the Encounter RTL Compiler global synthesis tool, and other Cadence tools
have been ported to the CPFs. Together,
the tools that recognize CPF comprise a
flow that spans a multi-specialist project
team with a common view of the design
that includes the low-power intent.
Contact Cadence directly for pricing
and delivery information.
Cadence
www.cadence.com