News | March 3, 2010

Tanner EDA And IC Mask Design Collaborate On Tools To Accelerate Analog Layout Design

Tanner EDA, the catalyst for innovation for the design, layout and verification of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs) and IC Mask Design, an industry leader in the provision of physical design services to the global semiconductor industry, are collaborating on the development of a toolset to accelerate analog layout design. By exclusively licensing IC Mask Design's patented layout acceleration technology and integrating it into Tanner EDA's custom IC design suite, the partners will offer engineers an improved solution to boost layout productivity and quality.

Tanner EDA and IC Mask Design have been working together since 2007. In the course of working with customers to better understand their analog layout design challenges, the partners recognized a need to speed up the analog layout process. In Q2 2010 Tanner EDA will offer a breakthrough toolset based on IC Mask Design's proprietary technology that accelerates and semi-automates physical design activities to improve productivity. The new tool will embed seamlessly into Tanner EDA's powerful and robust layout editor. Designers will be able to automatically generate devices and structures that are silicon-aware and are contextually tuned for their own specific layouts. This new solution gives engineers and managers the benefits of quality and productivity by consistently applying analog layout knowledge and experience to eliminate errors and speed layout cycles.

Commenting on the collaboration, Greg Lebsack, president of Tanner EDA, said, "We are very focused on bringing innovations from trusted, well-regarded partners to our customers, and are pleased to be able to help them benefit from the depth and breadth of IC Mask Design's experience in analog layout design. This collaboration is another instance of our desire to help analog designers develop breakthrough products with improved productivity and shorter design cycle times."

Mr. Ciaran Whyte, co-founder and CTO of IC Mask Design, added, "We have always been impressed with the functionality and ease-of-use that Tanner EDA's tools deliver to designers. It has been a natural extension of our working relationship to leverage our joint knowledge of analog layout challenges to further benefit analog layout productivity."

Previews of the joint solution developed by Tanner EDA and IC Mask Design will be available from March 9th to March 12th in Booth #12 at the Design Automation & Test in Europe (DATE) conference in Dresden, Germany. The partners expect to ship this tool along with Tanner EDA's next major product release – v15 of HiPer Silicon – at the beginning of Q2, 2010.

About IC Mask Design
Founded in 2002, IC Mask Design is a dynamic engineering organization and industry leader in the provision of Physical Design services to the global semiconductor industry. The company delivers services for analog, RF, mixed-signal and digital designs, and provides a range of training courses covering the complete spectrum of physical design.

About Tanner EDA
Tanner EDA provides a complete line of software solutions that catalyze innovation for the design, layout and verification of analog and mixed-signal (A/MS) integrated circuits (ICs). Customers are creating breakthrough applications in areas such as power management, displays and imaging, automotive, consumer electronics, life sciences, and RF devices. A low learning curve, high interoperability, and a powerful user interface improve design team productivity and enable a low total cost of ownership (TCO). Capability and performance are matched by low support requirements and high support capability as well as an ecosystem of partners that bring advanced capabilities to A/MS designs.

Founded in 1988, Tanner EDA solutions deliver just the right mixture of features, functionality and usability. The company has shipped over 33,000 licenses of its software to more than 5,000 customers in 67 countries.

SOURCE: Tanner EDA