Hybrid power analyser speeds digital TV IC signoff: News from Acad Corp

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LG has selected Acad's FinePower IR drop and electromigration analysis tool for the design and verification of a complex full chip used in its latest digital TV. With worldwide leading edge technology of digital TV solutions, LG is a leading supplier of digital TVs. Under its licence agreement, LG's digital TV chip designers have used Acad's FinePower to perform hybrid gate and transistor level analysis needed to assist in the first-pass silicon success of digital TV ICs.

FinePower was used in conjunction with the Synopsis's extraction, power library, and Primetime timing analysis tools.

"Fast, accurate, and full chip gate/transistor-level power analysis is essential for verifying the IR drop and analyzing the electromigration impact of our complex and high performance digital TV design, but older power analysis tools are limited by either capacity, accuracy, or the performance we need", said the parties concerned with design methodology of LG System IC Division.

"FinePower provided us with weeks of saving in full chip power analysis.

Within only a day of CPU hours, Finepower completed the full chip analysis with our six million plus gate netlist and its twenty million plus of parasitic and power net elements in a full dynamic analysis mode.

FinePower's capacity to analyze the full chip including parasitic elements in its dynamic analysis mode provided us with more confidence in its accuracy than the traditional static analysis tools, particularly when FinePower can complete its full analysis in less than a day".

"In addition to performance and accuracy, FinePower's hybrid ability is also critical to our designers", added the LG's System IC Division.

"With close to two hundred different IP blocks in our 0.13um process, FinePower ability to accept all of our IP in different netlist forms is a key to solve our design flow compatibility issue.

And FinePower's flexibility in performing black box, grey box, and white box analysis provided our designer the ability to choose its own trade off in speed and accuracy".

"After the power analysis was done", said Andy Huang, CEO of Acad, "FinePower provided the customer the ability to perform what-if analysis for power pad, power bus, and power strip editing in our GUI environment.

Furthermore, designer can also use our Primtime interface to visualize and analyze the new IR drop induced critical timing paths".

"In the highly competitive digital TV arena, the ability to complete full chip with detailed power analysis quickly is essential for success", said Huang.

"We're pleased to offer LG designer the additional hybrid flexibility which enable a speedy verification and help ensure first-silicon success.

And most important of all, FinePower's ability to perform what-if analysis and report the IR drop induced critical paths allows the designer to quickly solve challenging power related manufacturing and functional problems".

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