Design Tool for Mobile Chips Produces Major Power Savings; Prolific's New ProPower Software Cuts Leakage Power up to 20%.

NEWARK, Calif. -- Chips designed for use in mobile devices got a shot in the arm today, as Prolific Inc. released its ProPower(TM) optimization software. ProPower reduces leakage power by an average of 20 percent on designs that have already been optimized using standard place and route tools. As a result, mobile devices using chips optimized with ProPower will offer greater battery life and standby time.

ProPower achieves power-savings by intelligently analyzing designs to determine where power is lost, then strategically replaces power leaking cells with functionally equivalent cells which have lower passive power losses. ProPower does not restructure the logic, so there is no need for designers to modify test-vectors, or re-verify the functionality of the design. ProPower guarantees (by using PrimeTime(R)) that the timing for every path-group will be no worse after power reduction. Because ProPower can reduce leakage power significantly without requiring engineering change order (ECO) placement or routing, it can be run as a design is being finalized, and after all other optimization has been exhausted. ProPower can safely be used up to tape-out.

Leakage power particularly impacts mobile devices, but the problem is becoming more widespread as semiconductor device manufacturers move to fabrication processes with smaller features. Although they provide performance and area benefits, these smaller processes also bring some power problems. "Leakage power is a first-order problem at 90 nanometers," said Paul de Dood, Prolific's founder. "In 90nm and smaller designs, leakage power increases dramatically."

"ProPower reduced leakage power by up to 18 percent on some blocks in our latest MiMagic applications processor design, even though our original design work was highly optimized through the use of the latest leakage reduction tools," said Dr. Sudhir Chandratreya, vice president of VLSI Design at NeoMagic Corp. "We finished the ProPower run on a Friday and successfully taped out the next Tuesday without having to re-route. We're very happy with the results."

"There are a number of design techniques for avoiding dynamic power problems, but leakage power is an issue for all portable devices," added David Oliver, senior design engineer, AMD Personal Connectivity Solutions Group. "Based on our results with ProTiming, I'm looking forward to using ProPower on our next project."

ProPower is available immediately on HP-UX, Linux, and Sun Solaris platforms. The ProPower add-on is priced at $70,000 for a one-year license add-on to Prolific's popular ProTiming product.

About Prolific

Prolific Inc.'s IC design optimization software significantly reduces time to tapeout by automatically improving performance or reducing power consumption of cell-based designs. Prolific's customers include companies like AMD, NEC, ARM, and Broadcom. Prolific is a 10-year-old, privately held, profitable company based in Silicon Valley, at 39899 Balentine Dr., Suite 380, Newark, CA 94560, telephone [phone], fax [phone]. For more information, visit http://www.prolificinc.com/.

ProGenesis is a registered trademark and ProTiming and ProPower are trademarks of Prolific Inc. Prolific acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services.