Oki Develops Analog Blocks Five Times Faster With Cadence Technology
Tokyo, Japan and San Jose, CA - (JCN Newswire) - Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN) (Nasdaq:CDN) and Oki Electric Co., Ltd. (TSE:6703) today announced that Oki has achieved five times faster design turn-around-time for its analog blocks than with its previous design methodology and has successfully completed 30 reusable analog intellectual property (IP) designs using Cadence(R) Virtuoso(R) NeoCircuit technology.
"Cadence's Virtuoso NeoCircuit technology has become a key component of Oki's analog IP creation," said Ichiro Yamamoto, senior manager, Design System Department in the LSI Design Division of Oki Electric's Silicon Solutions Company. "We are proud to announce that we have established a new design culture based on Virtuoso NeoCircuit with our proprietary IP templates. This Cadence technology allows us to compete more effectively with other leading manufacturers in this market segment." Oki's designers were looking to reuse the analog IP they had already created without having to manually repeat design work. The use of this fully tested IP reduced the need for - and, therefore, time spent on - expensive verification cycles and silicon re-spins. This had the added benefit of allowing designers to focus on their core competencies.
Since adopting Cadence's NeoCircuit technology in December 2003, Oki has been using it to design analog circuits for personal mobile market-use LSIs (large scale integrated circuits), sound generator LSIs, memory LSIs including P2ROM(TM), DRAM and FeRAM, Flat Panel Display (FPD) Driver LSIs for TFT-LCD and OLED, etc. With this technology, they have been able to achieve five times faster design turn-around-time than with their previous design methodology. Internal Oki testing has proven that the quality of the analog circuits designed using NeoCircuit is much higher than the circuits designed from scratch.
Cadence Virtuoso NeoCircuit technology enables designers to rapidly size their circuit to meet performance specifications. The technology provides design teams the ability to predict silicon performance, improve yield and achieve improved design accuracy. Virtuoso NeoCircuit is an integral part of a front-to-back automated rapid analog design (RAD) flow and provides circuit designers with a fast efficient methodology for generating analog IP, all the way from schematic entry through to physical layout.
Analog circuitry is challenging to design, and analog content is extremely sensitive to process variations. These challenges can adversely impact chip yields. Cadence Virtuoso NeoCircuit technology speeds SoC and analog/mixed-signal design and improves quality by providing design exploration, design centering, and circuit and layout optimization early in the design cycle. This enables designers to optimize circuit specifications while taking into account manufacturing variations. The net result is higher-performance designs with improved yield in less time. Moreover, circuits created with this unique design methodology become analog IP that designers can reuse and retarget to new processes, speeding time to market. "Cadence is very pleased that Oki has successfully established its analog design environment in less than a year and, in the process, created over 30 analog IP designs based on the Cadence Virtuoso NeoCircuit technology" said Felicia James, vice president and general manager, Cadence Virtuoso custom design platform. "This success is proof of Oki's advanced analog design innovation."
About Cadence
Cadence enables global electronic-design innovation and plays an essential role in the creation of today's integrated circuits and electronics. Customers use Cadence software and hardware, methodologies, and services to design and verify advanced semiconductors, consumer electronics, networking and telecommunications equipment, and computer systems. Cadence reported 2004 revenues of approximately $1.2 billion, and has approximately 4,700 employees. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with sales offices, design centers, and research facilities around the world to serve the global electronics industry. More information about the company, its products, and services is available at http://www.cadence.com. Cadence, Virtuoso, Spectre and the Cadence logo are registered trademarks of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
About Oki Electric Industry
Founded in 1881, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. is Japan's first telecommunications manufacturer, with its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. With the corporate vision, "Oki, Network Solutions for a Global Society," Oki provides top-quality products, technologies and solutions to its customers through its info-telecom system business, semiconductor business and printer business. All three businesses functions as a collective force to create exciting new products and technologies that satisfy a spectrum of customer needs in various markets. Visit Oki's global web site at http://www.oki.com/.