Sunplus selects Verplex to verify all chip designs.

Sunplus of Taiwan recently said it has deployed Conformal Logic Equivalence Checker (LEC) from Verplex Systems Inc. throughout its integrated circuit (IC) design flow.

In addition, Sunplus is using Conformal LEC as its final standard sign-off criteria for all of its chip designs.

"We selected Verplex as our formal verification vendor because its tools are best in class and we can trust its results since their algorithms were developed completely independently of the design process and implementation tools." says Ching-Hsiang Yang, Sunplus' computer-aided design (CAD) manager. "Verplex has found several critical bugs late in our design cycle, saving us considerable time and expense. We have made Conformal LEC a must-run verification requirement for every taped out chip, and will consider them LEC certified."

"Sunplus is a top IC design house in Taiwan and an important partner of ours," adds C. Michael Chang, president and chief executive officer of Verplex. "It values our logic verification solution in the same way it values physical verification tools and industry standard DRC and LVS checks."

Founded in 1990, Sunplus is the number one consumer chip design house in Taiwan and was the 20th fabless design house worldwide in 2001. The company had been working with worldwide leading companies in consumer and computer business to provide them the best cost-performance IC solutions. With 560 employees, there were more than one thousand different products and 480 million chips shipped to the customers and the revenue was $197 million in 2001. The company is headquartered in Science Park, Hsinchu, and traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under the symbol 2401.