Custom ASIC Design Solutions - Open-Silicon About MAX Technology Open-Silicon is a fabless ASIC company delivering the most cost-effective, predictable and reliable custom ASIC solution to electronics product customers worldwide. Open-Silicon’s OpenMODELЄ is the semiconductor industry's first end-to-end custom ASIC solution based on a revolutionary business model that provides a seamless, low-cost, low risk alternative to traditional models for complex ASIC design and development. The OpenMODEL brings freedom of choice to the traditionally inflexible chip supply chain. We optimize the chip supply chain through a wide portfolio of fabrication process technologies, pre-qualified IP, package assembly and test solutions and a world-class design, product engineering and operations team. This approach allows our customers to take advantage of a optimized structure that ensures chip costs will be significantly lower than our competitors and in most cases COT. For more detailed information, product configurations and pricing please contact Gillaspy Associates at 805-386-0700 or click here to register for more information. PowerMAXTM enables design for the lowest possible power. Low power design has moved to the mainstream with 90nm, 65nm, and 40nm, as even designs that were not traditionally power sensitive are now paying close attention to power consumption due to exponential growth in leakage power and higher dynamic power from increasing levels of integration and performance. In implementing low power designs, Open-Silicon starts with a robust design methodology using conventional techniques. These power savings methods include low-power place-and-route, voltage islands, power gating, clock gating, multi-Vt, and multi-channel length. Some of these techniques have been around for years, while some, such as multi-channel length, are relatively new. These are shown in the diagram: PowerMAX adds to this foundation with four new technologies: transistor level transformations, back biasing, power recovery, and custom leakage signoff. This results in the ASIC industry's most complete low power design offering:   PowerMAX's transistor level optimization creates new standard cells on-the-fly to drive down both dynamic and leakage power. In addition to its variability control value, back biasing can also be employed whenever devices enter standby mode to further throttle back leakage power and prolong battery life. Power recovery operates late in the design phase to find timing paths with extra timing margin and replace cells with either higher Vt or lower drive strength equivalents. Finally, with custom leakage signoff Open-Silicon characterizes cell library leakage throughout the temperature range and then uses the actual design junction temperature for the leakage power calculation. Since the leakage power doubles every 15 degrees C, this is required for accurate power estimation. CoreMAXTM was created to build the fastest processor cores in the ASIC world. Processors have a central role in ASIC designs, serving as both a compute engine and a controller for other ASIC blocks. Unlike some logic where clock frequencies are set at discrete values, improving processor performance a few percent often equates to more performance in the final ASIC, and a better overall product. For example, in a mobile media player application, a small improvement in software performance without compromising power consumption may give a significant edge over the competition in terms of device capability or responsiveness. Also, for some applications overall performance is not as big a factor as cost. For those designs, it may be possible to use CoreMAX to build a processor using a higher-density standard cell library while still achieving strong performance. Open-Silicon has extensive processor design experience from over 50 processor implementations, including the techniques in the diagram to right: In addition to these standard techniques, Open-Silicon offers CoreMAX. The CoreMAX technology comes out of the Open-Silicon acquisition of Zenasis Technologies in 2007 and uses over two million lines of C++ software and several patented techniques to move beyond the limitations of traditional library-based ASIC design. Built-in CoreMAX functions include design Boolean analysis and optimization, static timing, cell placement, route estimation, and simultaneous optimization at the logical, physical, and transistor levels. Based on the needs of each critical path in the design, CoreMAX may change cells, move cells, or even create new cells on-the-fly, performing a library-compatible layout for each new cell and characterizing these cells for use throughout the EDA environment. The new cells offer unique drive strengths and functionality that enable maximum device performance.   VariMAXTM addresses increasing process variability. Traditional approaches to variation management involve increased design margins and a large number of extraction and analysis corners. These approaches struggle in technologies like 65nm and 40nm where performance and leakage vary widely across a population of otherwise good devices. Open-Silicon is addressing this with the VariMAX product, which consists of back biasing today and adaptive voltage and frequency control in the future. Back biasing is a technique that has been used for many years now in the ultra-high volume silicon space, where person-decades could affordably be spent in device optimization. By making this technology available to the ASIC space, Open-Silicon has enabled customers with lower volumes to now enjoy the same leakage and performance variation control and the associated power, performance, and device yield advantages. Open-Silicon's back biasing design approach works by controlling the bulk transistor node voltage so that fast, leaky parts are reined in by adaptive calibration of the silicon.   For more detailed information, product configurations and pricing please contact Gillaspy Associates at 805-386-0700 or click here to register for more information. Since 1997, Gillaspy Associates has built a solid reputation for developing strong relationships with our customers by providing them with quality solutions and ongoing support.