CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

19 December 2005

Implementation Investments

Faraday Successfully Completes a Range of 130-nm Tapeouts with Cadence Encounter

Faraday Technology Corporation and Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced that Faraday has successfully taped out ten 130-nanometer ASIC production chips with the Cadence® Encounter® digital IC design platform. Ten other 130-nanometer ASIC chips are currently being designed at Faraday using the Encounter platform.

The 130-nanometer Faraday chips, with gate counts from 2 million to 5 million, are designed for a wide range of applications such as high-performance networking (450MHz), low-power mobile video, and portable PC peripherals. The Cadence Encounter platform provided extensive timing/signal integrity (SI) closure and low-power features, which enabled Faraday to quickly implement low-power structured as well as standard cell ASICs. Additionally, Faraday improved the competitiveness of its silicon intellectual property (IP) by using Encounter RTL Compiler global synthesis.

"We have successfully taped out ten 130-nanometer customer chips using the Encounter platform," said Victor Lin, vice president of ASIC Technology at Faraday. "With Cadence's help we are able to achieve smaller die sizes, higher performance, and lower power, which are exactly what customers expected."

The Encounter digital IC design platform provides a complete RTL-GDSII implementation solution. It includes Encounter RTL Compiler global synthesis technology for low-power-aware logic and physical synthesis, Encounter NanoRouteT nanometer routing, and signoff-quality SI- and IR-aware timing with Encounter CeltICT and VoltageStorm analysis.

"We are pleased that Cadence Encounter products for synthesis, signal-integrity-based timing closure and low power have contributed to Faraday's success in a wide variety of markets, including IP, ASIC and structured ASIC," said Wei-Jin Dai, vice president, digital IC implementation at Cadence. "We applaud Faraday's success in maximizing the benefits of Encounter."

Faraday Technology Corporation is an silicon IP and fabless ASIC vendor. The company's broad IP portfolio includes 32-bit RISC CPUs, DSPs, and PHYs/Controllers for USB 2.0, Ethernet, Serial ATA and PCI Express. With more than 500 employees and 2004 revenues of US$159 million, Faraday is one of the largest fabless ASIC companies in the Asia-Pacific region, and it also has a significant presence in other worldwide markets. Headquartered in Taiwan, Faraday has service and support offices around the world, including the U.S., Japan, Europe and China. For more information, please visit: http://www.faraday-tech.com .

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