28 January 2008
PowerCentric generates superior quality clock trees and reduces post-CTS design flow iterations for Atheros.
Azuro, Inc. the provider of advanced clock implementation tools for nanometer chip design, today announced that Atheros Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATHR), a leading developer of advanced wireless solutions, has successfully produced working silicon on the AR3011 single chip Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR design for high-performance mobile and embedded wireless products using Azuro’s PowerCentric™.
Atheros’ design was already aggressively clock gated using front-end RTL synthesis tools in addition to containing multiple levels of hand-crafted clock gating logic. By utilizing PowerCentric, Atheros was able to generate superior quality clock trees, reduce post-CTS design flow iterations, and achieve significant reductions in total chip power consumption without any impact on chip size or performance.
“Clock tree synthesis is a critical step in the design flow which the EDA industry has under-invested in for some time now,” said Steve Padnos, Methodology Architect for Atheros. “Azuro's PowerCentric truly is a fresh approach to CTS, and enables us to deliver silicon to market faster and with even lower power consumption than before.”
Azuro's PowerCentric is a complete replacement for CTS and post-CTS optimization. Unlike traditional CTS solutions, PowerCentric's unique multi-objective algorithm directly considers power, congestion, and timing across multiple modes and corners during the clock tree buffering process. By combining this multi-objective algorithm with advanced logic path timing and placement optimization methods, PowerCentric is able to deliver ultra-low power clock structures without impacting design speed or area, even for the most complex SoC designs.
“Ultra-complex, ultra-low power clock trees are very common in mobile device markets," said Paul Cunningham, co-founder and chief executive officer for Azuro. “Whereas a previous version of this Atheros chip required multiple iterations between CTS and timing analysis, this was not the case using PowerCentric. This success with Atheros is a great example of how Azuro’s multi-objective clock solution helps its users deliver the best silicon to market, and do it quickly.”
