Design Automation Conference, SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- July 27, 2009 – Tuscany Design Automation, the leader in structured placement and visualization solutions for integrated circuit (IC) design, focuses on providing ease of collaboration, access and implementation to design teams and managers. At DAC 2009, the company today introduced semiconductor and fabless customers to the Tuscany Dashboard, the first web-enabled solution for the visualization and control of IC design data, bridging front-end and back-end teams.
Design teams need “golden” sign-off tools, from timing to back-end place-and-route and final verification. The intent is to ensure that final design and physical layout achieve the specified functional, timing and power requirements. Each of these tools produces its own analysis of the design and each has its own version of the data. Data integration and coordination across groups (and tools) always add time-consuming overhead. This invariably increases during final closure of the design, just at the point when it can be least afforded. As designs become more complex and as design teams become larger and more geographically dispersed, it is vital to have comprehensive information about the entire design in one place to enable better communication among the various teams.
The Tuscany Dashboard provides a Web interface that improves communication and visualization among design teams, and for management, enabling:
· Distributed development to close designs with challenging requirements even when engineers are working across multiple sites, with multiple chips in progress and with complex design constraints. Team members can share visualization and annotation to simultaneously optimize power, timing and placement.
· Access to consistent views of data collected from all tools in a heterogeneous physical design flow, including the status of metrics, visualization of critical paths and the history of the design.
· History of any modifications to the design database and the resulting changes to metrics, allowing comparisons from any point in the design timeline up to the state of the design today.
The Tuscany Dashboard works within all standard design flows, aggregating the output of the data from existing tools into a single source. The Tuscany Dashboard produces engineering views of current focal point issues or “hot spots” in the design. It also delivers customizable metrics, along with history and trends, and summarizes all in well-designed web pages.
“Tape-outs often go on and on without much ability to see whether progress is actually being made,” said Jim Hogan, private investor. “Each designer knows his or her own specific problems, but isn’t usually able to see the patterns of the whole. Tuscany Design's approach definitely makes a lot of sense.”
“Most design teams have custom or unique tools added to fill specific gaps in the primary flow,” said Keith Mueller, president and CEO of Tuscany Design Automation. “This compounds the traditional communication gap that exists between front-end and back-end designers. The Tuscany Dashboard provides a solid platform for management tracking and ensures that designers can see what they need to see and do what they need to do to get to design closure.”
Tuscany Dashboard and Tego, Tuscany Design Automation’s structured design accelerator, are being demonstrated in Booth #3955 at the 46th Design Automation Conference in San Francisco from Monday, July 27th until Thursday, July 30th, 2009. Stop by to register for a chance to win a 32GB iPod Touch to help you visualize, manage, and control your music, much as Dashboard does for your design.
Pricing and Availability
The Tuscany Dashboard will be shipping to early beta customers on August 3, with production release scheduled for Q4. US pricing begins at $50,000 per license per year. For additional detail, please contact the Tuscany Design sales team at Email Contact or call 1-408-868-4114.
About Tuscany Design Automation
Tuscany Design Automation develops and markets structured placement and visualization solutions for integrated circuit (IC) design that help engineers achieve higher performance chips—such as microprocessors, graphics, DSP designs – at 65nm, 45nm, and below. The company’s technology provides web-enabled collaboration, access and implementation to the various groups and disciplines in the design team, helping them to better manage, optimize and reliably close designs. Tuscany Design also accelerates existing physical design flows by providing extensive visualization and rapid what-if analysis for CPU/DSP, cores, and other blocks using a structured design methodology. Tuscany Design is based in Fort Collins, Colorado, with offices in Silicon Valley. For additional information, see www.tuscanyda.com
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Editorial Contact:
Cayenne Communication LLC
Linda D Marchant, +1-919-451-0776, Email Contact