PARIS – EDA startup Nangate Inc. is aiming to provide digital integrated circuits (IC) designers with the advantages of full custom design implementation while preserving the benefits of cell-based design methodologies.

The California-based company claims its new re-synthesis solution, dubbed Design Optimizer, is capable of creating an optimized gate-level design with area, speed or power benefits. Built entirely by Nangate, Design Optimizer has no licensed or external components in its package. It uses patented covering and mapping algorithms developed internally.

"Nangate is now taking a new step, including the synthesis of the transistor layout in itself to become part of the physical synthesis. This brings a much better utilization of physical synthesis for higher performances, lower costs and lower power consumption," commented Nangate's co-founder, president and CEO Ole Christian Andersen. "The essence of what we are trying to do is to bring together the two disciplines of physical synthesis, on the one hand, and the creation of tailored cell libraries for chip designers, on the other hand."

Andersen explained that all current RTL synthesis tools, offered by Cadence Design Systems Inc. (San Jose, California), Magma Design Automation Inc. (Santa Clara, California) and Synopsys Inc. (Mountain View, California), rely on a predefined standard cell library. The libraries are created independently and are re-used for different types of design. Nangate Design Optimizer, however, provides the new capability to combine synthesis with library creation for a better utilization of the CMOS processes. It also enables to identify and uses high pin count and complex gate functions that existing synthesis tools cannot use, he continued.

"RTL synthesis is basically the process of translating a technology independent specification in VHDL or Verilog into a netlist of gates from a standard cell library," Andersen further explained. "Design Optimizer operates on the gate-level taking as input a gate-level netlist along with a source library, and outputs a new optimized netlist along with a new target library. The target library can be the same as the source library, it can be an augmented library or it can be a completely new library depending on the optimization mode chosen."

In creating a full library, the library designer must specify what functions are needed and the drive strengths for each function. In addition, the row-height of the cells and the cell template must be specified. These library parameters have a huge impact on how well the RTL synthesis can perform its function. Nangate asserted that Design Optimizer combines the optimization of the library parameters with synthesis and can thereby reach a whole new level of optimization.

Nangate said Design Optimizer is fully compatible with Nangate Library Creator and Library Characterizer. These three solutions are, however, independent, and a company that has a well-established flow can select solely Design Optimizer.

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