Tackling low-power design issues -- Synopsys

Managing power efficiently is not a choice, but an imperative. Semiconductor content is increasing everywhere, and in fact, consumers and globalization are driving the semiconductor content in electronic systems.

A glance at the ecosystem pyramid reveals that the global electronics industry stands at US$3,200 billion, semiconductors at US$274 billion, equipment and materials at US$86 billion, and EDA at US$4.4 billion. EDA is at the heart of the electronics industry.

Subhash Bal, country director, Synopsys (India) EDA Software Pvt. Ltd, says that for low power imperatives, it is important to look at systemic factors. Energy usage and carbon emissions, especially, have been growing alarmingly, and will continue to do so for quite some time. This is largely due to uncontrolled consumption of devices and other electronic equipment. "We need to support energy usage without carbon emissions. In that respect, solar is a good solution," he adds.

Computing is energy intensive by nature. Consider these stats -- approximately 1 billion of the world's PCs are switched on for nine hours per day, requiring 95,000MW. And of the US$250 billion spent globally each year powering computers, about 85 percent of that energy is wasted, while the computer stands idle.

Today, more devices and gadgets are being introduced, with more features and at lower prices. All of these devices demand a huge amount of battery power. Speed increases at the expense of energy consumption. Leakage has also become a major issue. There is therefore a growing need to solve power-related problems.

The Synopsys Sentaurus
Synopsys' Sentaurus optimizes a device's power. It also addresses photovoltaics. The Sentaurus process is an advanced 1D, 2D, and 3D process simulator for developing and optimizing silicon and compound semiconductor process technologies.

Created by combining features from Synopsys and former ISE TCAD products, together with a wide range of new features and capabilities, Sentaurus is a new-generation process simulator for addressing the challenges found in current and future process technologies. "The Sentaurus takes care of the processing part. It does modeling, 2D/3D simulation, etc. It can be applied to both semiconductors and solar," says Bal.

Eclypse low-power solution
Synopsys' goal is to deliver the most comprehensive solution, enabling designers to build the most advanced, low power chips and systems in the world. In the hope of achieving this, it has introduced the Eclypse low-power solution. Sharat D Kaul, sales and marketing manager, Synopsys India, highlights the fact that the Eclypse looks at the design side specifically.

The silicon-level concerns include factors such as more functionality, more computing power, limited power budget, design complexity, verification complexity, testing, reliability and schedule. System-level concerns include factors such as battery life, system cooling, reliability, packaging cost, operating cost, air conditioning cost, carbon footprint and green initiatives. Most design teams are both overwhelmed and under prepared.

The Eclypse low power solution is aimed at addressing such needs. It provides an alignment of technology, IP, methodology, services and industry standards -- geared to meet the challenges of advanced low power designs.

Eclypse supports the industry-standard Unified Power Format (UPF) language, used to capture low power design requirements. It offers low power education programs, end-to-end UPF support, multi-voltage verification with assertions, automated clock tree synthesis, and automated power switch optimization.