CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

3 October 2007

Implementation Investments

S3 / Via Accelerates Design Closure 30% With Sequence CoolProducts

S3 Graphics, a subsidiary of Via Technologies, chose Sequence Design's CoolProducts for accelerated design closure, achieving 1GHz performance in a single pass, when implementing their next-generation 3D graphics chips. S3 Graphics is a leading supplier in the 3D enabled PC graphics market, delivering a wide range of features and performance to serve the graphics and multimedia needs of both the home and business markets.

S3 Graphics increased engineering productivity and shaved months off their top level timing closure using the concurrent timing and noise optimization capabilities of CoolPower. The next generation chip was challenging in both size and performance: over 10M instances; multiple clocks ranging from 800MHz to 1GHz; 90nm Fujitsu high performance libraries; with mixed Vt.

At S3, the physical design team is in charge of all the aspects of physical design, with key objectives of engineering productivity and time to market. With Sequence, the team was able to meet industry-standard time to market goals, while requiring significantly fewer resources, both in engineering headcount and software overhead. In fact, they clocked productivity gains of approximately 4 to 5 times the industry norm.

"S3 saved several months on achieving design closure based on CoolPower's ability to concurrently solve for, analyze, and optimize timing and noise," commented Xin Chang, Manager of Engineering, S3 Graphics. "We use Sequence for final signoff with an Astro flow, and Cool Products deliver faster run time, accurate results, and reduced iterations between different tools."

S3 continues to break new boundaries in the high quality and power-efficient mobile and desktop graphics product sectors using Sequence products to achieve power savings goals. Power is important to S3 due to both battery life and chip / packaging costs in their high volume mobile and price-sensitive media products applications.

S3 will continue to choose Sequence as its partner for accelerated design closure and power management as it moves to 65nm and below. S3 plans to extend their use of CoolPower in the next design, for power optimization including automated leakage power reduction, cell resizing and voltage drop optimization.

About S3 Graphics

S3 Graphics Co., Ltd., a VIA Technologies, Inc. joint venture company, is a leading supplier in the 3D enabled PC graphics market. S3 Graphics ships low power, high performance, commercial grade 3D graphics sub-systems to top tier notebook manufacturers. In addition, S3 Graphics integrates market-leading chipset technology from VIA Technologies, Inc. ( http://www.viatech.com/ ) into shared memory architecture products for the high volume, value PC market. Headquartered in Fremont, California, S3 Graphics has a long-term commitment to top performance, quality and state-of-the-art features for desktop and mobile applications.

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