TO ALL---any comments?
Monday January 5, 3:05 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: Avant! Corporation
Avant! Begins Customer Shipments of Apollo(TM) -- EDA Industry's First VDSM Place and Route Software
IC Design Automation Leader Continues Its Momentum With Revolutionary Breakthroughs
FREMONT, Calif., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Avant! Corporation (Nasdaq: AVNT - news) today announced it has begun shipping Apollo - the EDA industry's first place and route software for very deep-submicron (VDSM) design paradigm. Based on Avant!'s unique, production-proven place and route architecture, the new Apollo family offers many industry-first features.
Apollo is built on Avant!'s recently announced VDSM database, Milkyway, and has seamless interoperability with other Avant! tools including floorplanning, timing optimization, full-chip parasitic extraction, rail voltage-drop analysis, layout editing, and hierarchical physical verification.
''Semiconductor companies worldwide have adopted Avant!'s superior place and route technology,'' said Gerald C. Hsu, chairman, president and CEO of Avant! Corporation. ''It is estimated that over $30 billion worth of semiconductor chips which will be shipped this year have been designed using Avant!'s physical design and analysis tools. Our momentum continues with this launch of Apollo which raises the bar even higher for the competition. We believe that it will set a new standard in the VDSM design paradigm,'' continued Hsu.
Within placement algorithms, Apollo contains the next-generation HOTPlace(TM), hierarchical placement optimization technology, improved timing optimization, power-driven and rail voltage-drop driven placement. In the area of VDSM routing, it includes timing-driven routing, innovative coupled noise-driven routing, automatic wire sizing, multiple clock tree construction methods, and clock tree synthesis with gated clocks.
Customers in the early-access program have already started using Apollo for designing chips in various applications ranging from microprocessor, memory, multimedia, and graphics during Q4 97.
About Apollo 1997.4 Production Release
Apollo 1997.4 is a fourth-generation place and route system for very deep-submicron (VDSM) cell-based IC designs. It addresses difficult design issues of optimizing for area, timing, noise, and power. It works seamlessly with other Avant! tools using Milkyway, a common VDSM database.
Apollo Contains the Following Features:
Progressive look-ahead place and route architecture which allows generation of the smallest-possible die size Unique and patented all-path timing-driven algorithms to effectively address the VDSM timing convergence problems New all-path timing-driven placement algorithms -- Fourth generation of fast, all-path timing-driven algorithm,
invented by Avant!, contains unique automatic search-and-refine engine for
timing "hot spot" optimization needed for meeting stringent DSM and VDSM
timing requirements;
HotPlace: Hierarchical placement optimization technology for VDSM. This new technology offers up to 10X speed improvements over Aquarius; Apollo is built on Milkyway, the new VDSM common database, yielding up to 30% less memory usage and up to 20% speed-up over Aquarius; New clock-driven placement for stringent VDSM clock requirements. New all-path timing-driven VDSM routing -- Unique global track optimization (GTO): Significantly improves
routing speed and quality of results. Apollo improves performance of GTO by
200% - 400%;
Variable width and spacing; -- Clock tree synthesis and skew management; -- Zero-skew routing; High-performance Option (HPO) for signal integrity management -- Timing-driven spacing to reduce cross-talk -- Selection of different routing layers depending on critical nets -- Differential-pair routing -- Delay-matching routing -- Signal-shielding-sensitive nets can be surrounded by rings which
are tied to ground
Antenna ratio-controlled routing for high-performance deep- submicron (DSM) and very deep-submicron (VDSM) processes to increase manufacturing yield and long-term reliability of ICs Routing for microprobing for debugging and testing very complex DSM or VDSM designs Power-driven design and voltage and current analysis with Mars-Rail Avant! recently announced another industry first -- Milkyway, a common database foundation for VDSM designs for Avant!'s physical design tools including Apollo family of tools, Star-RC parasitic extraction and Hercules, physical verification tool.
More about Milkyway -- VDSM Common Database
Avant! launched R&D efforts two years ago at its Research Triangle Park facility in North Carolina with its local engineering team. Their goal was to address difficult VDSM issues such as complexity, area, timing, power, and noise. The new VDSM design paradigm dictates that floorplanning, synthesis, place and route, physical verification and RC-parasitic extraction, layout editing, and design analysis inter-operate with coherent design data. With this purpose in mind, working from the same database becomes crucial. For the first time all design views -- including logical netlist, electrical information and geometrical information -- are stored in the same database, Milkyway.
Unique Architecture
Unlike previous efforts in the industry to place databases within ''frameworks,'' Milkyway has been architected to preserve the point tool performance. It includes the following unique features:
Turbo compression -- Avant!'s unique technique that enables compression of data and adapts to different data representations; Application-specific binary representation -- Eliminates overhead for each application that works on a common database; Dynamic object schema creation -- Because objects are created and dynamically handled per application needs, the common database is not burdened with unwanted information. This approach allows flexibility and extensibility of Milkyway as design tools are added to handle greater complexity; Efficient storage of massive parasitic information in compressed binary representation -- Designed specifically for high-efficiency complex full-chip signal analysis.
The new graphical user interface (GUI) is based on the popular public domain language, Tcl/Tk, which originated at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition, SCHEME, a public domain language, is used as the command language by the place and route application.
Avant! tools that operate with the Milkyway database include: Planet-RTL, RTL floorplanning tool; Planet-PL, physical floorplanning; Apollo, VDSM place and route; Solar, synthesis-oriented layout refinement tool for timing and area optimization; LTL, layout editor; Hercules, physical verification; Star-Power, rail voltage-drop analysis; and Star-RC, parasitic extraction and delay calculation tool. Future Avant! products will also operate with the Milkyway database.
Milkyway will support third party tool-interoperability via industry standard formats and interfaces such as EDIF, Verilog, GDSII, SDF, SPF, SPEF, PDEF, and formats specific to Synopsys.
About Avant!
Avant! (pronounced ah VANH tee) Corporation develops, markets, and supports integrated circuit design automation (ICDA) software for the layout, verification and analysis of deep submicron ICs including microprocessors, microcontrollers, application-specific standard products (ASSPs) and complex application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs). The company's new headquarters is located in Fremont, California. Telephone: 510-413-8000, Fax: 510-413-8080.
TO ALL--any comments re foll news?
Worldwide Web: avanticorp.com.
NOTE: Avant!, Apollo, Hercules, Milkyway, Planet, Solar, and Star-Power, are trademarks of Avant! Corporation. All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners and should be treated as such.
Except for any historical information presented herein, matters presented in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. The Company's future results could differ materially from the results presented herein. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed from time to time in the Company's public reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including those discussed in the Company's report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1996, and including the risks discussed in the ''Risk Factors'' section included in the Company's Registration Statement on Form S-3 as declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission on January 31, 1997.
SOURCE: Avant! Corporation
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