Accellera Expands Efforts, Announces Committee to Develop Standard Electronic Design Kit Formats.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 10, 2003

Semiconductor, EDA, Foundry and Library/IP Companies Collaborate

and Support Industry-wide OpenKit Initiative

ICCAD -- Accellera, the electronics industry organization focused on language-based electronic design standards, today announced the formation of a new Accellera technical subcommittee for the standardization of custom design kit data. The subcommittee, called the Accellera OpenKit (OK) Initiative, includes representatives from semiconductor, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), foundry and intellectual property (IP) companies. They are working together to define standard design kit formats for representing process technology and other design data in EDA environments.

The establishment of standard formats for custom design data will save a significant amount of engineering time currently spent in integrating tools with design kits, as well as simplify the use of multiple tools, flows and different IC processes.

"Accellera welcomes the opportunity to extend its standards activities to the area of design kits. We believe that we can add value to the industry by providing standard data formats for transistor-level design, an area that has needed it for a long time," said Dennis Brophy, Chairman of Accellera.

Design kits provide information required by EDA tools during the simulation, implementation and verification steps of IC design. This information includes process design rules, device models, schematic symbols and parameterized cells used for custom layout. To date, standards are largely nonexistent in the area of design kits. Nomenclature, use models, interfaces, quality thresholds, and delivery structures and mechanisms can vary widely depending on the selection of tools, library or IP and the targeted foundry requirements.

Industry Support

Participation in Accellera's OK Initiative subcommittee is open to all interested companies and individuals. To date, more than 20 companies are represented. These include Accellera members--Artisan Components, Inc., Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Mentor Graphics Corporation, Motorola, Inc., NEC Electronics America, and Synopsys, Inc., as well as 1st Silicon, Analog Design Automation, Inc., Applied Wave Research, Barcelona Design, Inc., Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing, CiraNova, Conexant Systems Inc., HPL Technologies, IC Methods, National Semiconductor Corporation, Sagantec, Silterra, Silvaco, TSMC, TI and Virage Logic among others.

"NEC Electronics America uses a wide variety of IC processes, EDA tools and vendors," said Wolfgang Roethig, Senior Engineering Manager at NEC Electronics America. "We support Accellera's efforts to incubate EDA standards that facilitate and streamline the design flow. Custom cell development and qualification are critical and time-consuming. The OpenKit Initiative strives to simplify the complex tasks necessary to deliver high-quality custom cells for SoC designs."

"Our long-standing philosophy is to lead and embrace open initiatives that help grow the industry, said Maq Mannan, vice president of the PDK Solutions Group at Cadence Design Systems, Inc. "As the leader in custom IC EDA solutions and process design kit (PDK) development, Cadence is lending its support to the OpenKit Initiative as a step forward in providing designers with a new generation of higher quality, silicon-accurate PDKs in less time."

"Customers should have the freedom to chose the best in class design tools without being constrained by tool dependent requirements," said Rich Goldman, vice president, strategic market development at Synopsys. "Customer reaction to the OpenKit Initiative has been overwhelmingly supportive. Our goal is to allow our customers to focus on the development of the design and minimize the time required to create the design kit. Synopsys has been a strong supporter of standards and is an active participant in this Initiative."

"The need to simplify analog design is becoming as apparent now just as the need to automate digital design was in the early eighties, said Jim Hogan, Sr. VP Business Development, Artisan Components. "The OpenKit Initiative will establish standards for custom design data elements or Design Kits that will enable greater automation to speed designs and to leverage limited analog expertise. The fact that all members of the design to manufacturing supply chain are represented will ensure that the resulting standards will serve the whole custom design-to-fab community."

About the OpenKit Initiative

Accellera's OK Initiative has been formed to deliver a standard for information used in the creation of process design kits that the design industry can leverage to improve productivity. For more information, please visit http://www.accellera.org/subcom.html

About Accellera

Accellera provides design standards for quick availability and use in the electronics industry. The organization and its members cooperatively deliver much-needed EDA standards that lower the cost of designing commercial IC and EDA products. As a result of Accellera's long-standing, successful partnership with the IEEE, Accellera standards are provided to the IEEE standards body for formalization and ongoing change control. For more information about joining Accellera, please visit www.accellera.org.

Accellera is located at 1370 Trancas Street #163, Napa, CA 94558. Phone: [phone], Fax: [phone], [e-mail].

Acronyms and Information

    EDA      Electronic Design Automation
    IC       Integrated Circuit
    ICCAD    International Conference on Computer Aided Design,
             www.iccad.com
    IEEE     Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
    IP       Intellectual Property
    OK       Open Kit
    PDK      Physical Design Kit
    SoC      System on Chip

All trademarks are the property of their respective holders.