Ciranova Unveils Industry's Only Complete and Open PCell Solution for Extreme EDA Tool Interoperability.OpenAccess-Based PyCell Studio[TM] and PCell Xtreme[TM] Provide New Level of Productivity and Efficiency for Today's Analog and Custom Chip Designers SANTA CLARA Santa Clara, city, Cuba Santa Clara (sän`tä klä`rä), city (1994 est. pop. 217,000), capital of Villa Clara prov., central Cuba. , Calif. -- Ciranova, Inc., an EDA (1) (Electronic Design Automation) Using the computer to design, lay out, verify and simulate the performance of electronic circuits on a chip or printed circuit board. start-up developing open and robust layout generation technology for analog and mixed signal design, today unveiled the industry's only complete solution for the creation and re-use of interoperable The ability for one system to communicate or work with another. See interoperability. parameterized cells (PCells), the fundamental building blocks for custom chip design. The company's PyCell Studio and PCell Xtreme products allow designers to create PyCells[TM] for use in any OpenAccess tool, including tools from market leader Cadence Design Systems (company) Cadence Design Systems - A company that sells electronic design automation software and services. http://cadence.com/. See also Verilog. , Inc., and to use legacy PCells written in proprietary languages in OpenAccess tools from multiple vendors. The result is the most significant advance in analog/mixed signal design interoperability in the past decade. Ciranova's mission is to develop the first open, interoperable method for custom chip designers to create new and/or migrate legacy analog IP. While IP interoperability and migration have progressed rapidly in the digital domain, analog design has lagged behind from a productivity standpoint due in part to the lack of a universal PCell mechanism. This has made interoperability between multiple vendors' tools and re-targeting IP to new process nodes difficult, and slowed overall development cycles. Ciranova is leveraging the promise of the industry-standard OpenAccess database from the Silicon Integration Initiative “Si2” redirects here. For other uses, see Si2 (disambiguation). Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) is a non-profit consortium of industry-leading semiconductor, systems, EDA, and manufacturing companies, focused on improving the way integrated circuits are (Si2) and the object oriented See object technology and object-oriented programming. power of the Python Python, in Greek mythology Python, in Greek mythology, a huge serpent. In some myths the infant Apollo slew Python at the oracle of Gaea in Delphi; in others Apollo killed the serpent in order to claim the oracle for himself. programming language to make PCell interoperability a reality. "Interoperability offers designers access to best-in-class tools at every stage of the design process," said Dr. Hau-Yung Chen, president of Silicon Canvas. "Ciranova's PCell solution enables design teams to preserve their existing PCell investment as well as offering a next generation PCell creation capability that promotes interoperability." Developed from the start to be compliant with the OpenAccess API (Application Programming Interface) A language and message format used by an application program to communicate with the operating system or some other control program such as a database management system (DBMS) or communications protocol. , Ciranova's tools are compatible with any OpenAccess flow. The company has production-tested its products with many EDA tools including tools from Applied Wave Research, Silicon Canvas and Silicon Navigator. (See accompanying announcements) "Our goal is to help analog design catch up with the state of the art in digital design, and the number one challenge in this space is interoperability," said Ed Petrus, chief operating officer Chief Operating Officer (COO) The officer of a firm responsible for day-to-day management, usually the president or an executive vice-president. and vice president of engineering at Ciranova. "PCells are extremely widespread in analog design, but to date all PCells have been locked to a single vendor. With the advent of a viable OpenAccess database on which the entire industry can base their tools, our vision of enabling truly interoperable analog IP can be achieved. PCells are the mechanism to do that. We made PyCell Studio available for free so that the industry would have a robust, correct-by-construction layout generation technology on which to build next generation ICs. And we have created PCell Xtreme to allow designers to immediately leverage their proprietary PCell infrastructure with their choice of OpenAccess tools from many vendors." The Next-Generation PCell Development Environment: PyCell Studio PyCell Studio is a suite of tools that allows a designer to generate interoperable OpenAccess PCells, called PyCells, and instantiate In object technology, to create an object of a specific class. See instance. instantiate - instantiation them in any OpenAccess environment, including Cadence's Virtuoso[TM] layout editor. PyCell Studio offers several highly productive industry-first features. The powerful layout generation API designed for generating sub-100nm integrated circuit layouts Integrated circuit layout, also known IC layout, IC mask layout, or mask design, is the representation of an integrated circuit in terms of planar geometric shapes which correspond to the patterns of metal, oxide, or semiconductor layers that make up the is accessed through Python, a modern, open-source, object-oriented programming language object-oriented programming language - object-oriented programming . These APIs coupled with the built-in Geometry Engine enable design-rule-correct-by-construction PCell creation. The Geometry Engine comprehends the complexity of today's advanced processes, alleviating developers from having to continuously manage the inter-relationship of complex design rules, including conditional and recommended rules. An integrated graphical layout viewer and modern IDE support interactive authoring and debug To correct a problem in hardware or software. Debugging software means locating the errors in the source code (the program logic). Debugging hardware means finding errors in the circuit design (logical circuits) or in the physical interconnections of the circuits. , including cross-probing between a layout object and the PyCell code which created it. Together, these capabilities deliver a stand-alone solution for PCell creation, which does not require any additional software. "We are using PyCell Studio to develop new PDKs for Analog Office," said Tom Quan, vice president of marketing at Applied Wave Research, Inc. "PyCell Studio frees our development team to focus resources on improving the overall design capabilities of Analog Office design suite and enables us to offer our customers higher quality PDKs in a shorter timeframe." Ciranova released PyCell Studio as a free downloadable product in January 2006, and hundreds of designers in 26 countries have downloaded it to start developing interoperable OpenAccess PCells and layout generators. The company is committed to maintaining PyCell Studio as a free tool, and its business model is based on generating revenues from providing premium commercial support for PyCell Studio, as well as from sales of other products including PCell Xtreme. PCell Xtreme Extends Proprietary PCells Into Other OpenAccess Tools Ciranova developed PCell Xtreme to enable designers to continue to use their legacy single-vendor infrastructure as they migrate to OpenAccess. PCell Xtreme's patent-pending technology allows OpenAccess tools from multiple vendors - such as layout tools, design rule checkers checkers, game for two players, known in England as draughts. It is played on a square board, divided into 64 alternately colored—usually red and black or white and black—square spaces, identical with a chessboard. and analysis tools - to open databases containing SKILL PCells. Because PCell Xtreme caches the PCell layout directly into an OpenAccess database, that layout is always exactly the same when viewed or used by other tools. This 'persistent PCell' approach means not only that PCells can be opened directly by other Open Access tools, but also that the cached database opens 10 times or more faster because the PCells do not need to be evaluated. PCell Xtreme enables users with a legacy single-vendor infrastructure to migrate quickly into multiple OpenAccess tools with minimal effort and risk. "Persistent PCells have been a top request from members of the OpenAccess Coalition for several years," said Steve Schulz, president & CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Si2. "Ciranova has eliminated a major hurdle for companies who want to take full advantage of interoperability using OpenAccess, which has been our goal at Si2 from the very start." Availability PyCell Studio is available for free download to registered users. It can be used to develop, validate and deploy any number of PyCell libraries, without restriction. The PyCell Studio distributions include everything required to create and release PyCells[TM], including Python, OpenAccess, documentation, tutorials, utilities and sample PyCell code. PyCell Studio is currently supported on 32-bit and 64-bit Linux, Solaris 8 and Solaris 10. PCell Xtreme will be released during Q4, 2006. Pricing starts at US$4,000 per seat for an annual time based license. Discounted enterprise licensing is also available. About Ciranova Ciranova is an Electronic Design Automation (EDA) startup company The creator of this article, or someone who has substantially contributed to it, may have a conflict of interest regarding its subject matter. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. , focused on building an open, interoperable, language-based cell generator technology for custom, analog and mixed signal (AMS AMS - Andrew Message System ) integrated circuit integrated circuit (IC), electronic circuit built on a semiconductor substrate, usually one of single-crystal silicon. The circuit, often called a chip, is packaged in a hermetically sealed case or a nonhermetic plastic capsule, with leads extending from it for design. Ciranova's technology, which is the only layout generator development environment built from the ground up on the industry standard OpenAccess database from Si2, will bring the integration, productivity and migration benefits of modern language-based design to custom and AMS designers. The company's first product, PyCell Studio[TM], is available as a free download from its web site, www.ciranova.com. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California Santa Clara, California (IPA: /ˌsæntəˈklærə/) , founded in 1777 and incorporated in 1852, is a city in Santa Clara County, in the U.S. state of California. . Ciranova, PyCell Studio, PyCell and PCell Xtreme are trademarks of Ciranova, Inc. All other trademarks referenced belong to their respective owners. Note to Editors: Digital photos available upon request. |
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