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OPEN-SILICON ADDS SILICON LOGIC ENGINEERING

 

SoC (System-on-Chip) design now has two distinct flows. One flow creates a platform design: a completely new SoC to serve a new application. The other flow slightly modifies the platform to create a derivative design. The derivative flow exploits the platform as much as possible, sometimes just replacing one block in the physical design without changing the rest of the chip at all.

The platform team contains the application specialists, architects, verification experts, and newdesign troubleshooters. The derivative team, perhaps unfairly, can look like a group of routine implementers— that is, it can look dispensable. Consequently, the derivative teams are vulnerable to outsourcing.

That’s where Open- Silicon enters the picture. The company’s founders originally conceived it as a design shop for turnkey back-end-ASIC design, with management and technical customer relations in the United States and a sophisticated backend process in India. That model was highly successful in good times, and Open-Silicon built a strong customer base among fabless start-ups. In hard times, however, start-ups may not be the most dependable source of income. Naveed Sherwani, company president and chief executive officer, started to build a base among larger companies, just as the larger companies started looking to outsource their derivative-design efforts.

The result is that Open- Silicon now finds itself doing significant business in executing derivative designs. This transition required additional expertise. “To do derivative chips successfully, you need to have front-end design expertise,” Sherwani says. The derivative team has to know the platform well enough to understand the implications of the changes, which can go two or three levels into the platform.

Initially, Open-Silicon met this need by gathering a “cloud” of specialist design partners to assist them. Sherwani also felt that the company needed in-house expertise at the architecture level and RTL (register-transfer level). “It really helps to be involved in the original platform design or at least to have the experience to understand it,” he says.

Eventually, Open-Silicon bought Silicon Logic Engineering, a full-range chip-design team. Now, relying on its newly acquired architecture, RTL, and implementation team, Open-Silicon can engage fully with a platform design, either during its development or later on, and produce derivatives to specification.

For more on this development, go to www.edn. com/100204pa.

Open-Silicon, www.open-silicon.com;
Silicon Logic Engineering, www.siliconlogic.com.