Magma adds power optimisation

Developed in Eindhoven, the Blast Power tool will allow designers to trade-off power against timing or area, said the firm, within one database and design environment.

“Power is something you need to do for power distribution, leakage power and managing multi-Vdd designs,” said Nitin Deo, v-p of business development at Magma.

Blast Power supports automatic power grid synthesis; leakage power optimisation using multiple threshold voltage libraries; support for multiple voltage domains; decoupling capacitor insertion; and back-gate biasing.

Reduced leakage is crucial at 90nm, said Deo, and can be achieved by using multi-threshold voltage transistors. “We can read in multiple threshold libraries and trade-off power, timing and area through out the design flow,” he said.

In test designs leakage was cut by 40 per cent, without impacting area or timing.

Switching power can be analysed, and is accurate to within eight to ten per cent of Spice, the firm claimed.

With multi-Vdd designs, the tool handles circuitry for shutting down parts of the IC and the necessary level shifting circuits. Analysis can continue, even in nets that cross several Vdd boundaries.

Prices will start at $295,000 for a three year licence.

Companies including ARM and Artisan have agreed to help Magma develop a low-power reference flow for the tool.