Cadence Design Systems,
Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS), the leader in global electronic design innovation,
and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) today announced a broad
expansion of their collaboration to better enable mutual customers to solve
the challenges of their latest custom designs, including RF, mixed-signal and
custom digital.
Cadence and TSMC will create solutions for two areas of custom design. First
they will collaborate on ways to support and enhance TSMC's recently announced
interoperable PDK (iPDK), one of the major pillars of TSMC's Open Innovation
Platform™, in the Cadence design environment. Second, they will expand
the number of process design kits available at TSMC online (PDKs and future
iPDKs) to better enable the advanced analog and mixed-signal design techniques
available through Cadence® Virtuoso® 6.1 technology.
"By working closely with Cadence, we can better meet the customer needs
for OpenAccess-based PDKs for Virtuoso 6.1 at a variety of process nodes, including
our most advanced processes," said S.T. Juang, senior director, Design
Infrastructure Marketing at TSMC. "Our collaboration will enable mutual
customers to innovate in IC design. With decades of experience building process
design kits for custom design, including RF, mixed signal and custom digital,
Cadence's collaboration will greatly assist us to enhance the iPDK functionality
and to realize the Open Innovation Platform's vision of interoperability."
"In addition to close collaborative efforts with TSMC on Cadence digital
implementation, signoff, and low-power solutions, the expanded collaboration
marks another major milestone in the relationship between Cadence and TSMC as
we work to enable TSMC's Open Innovation Platform," said Chi-Ping Hsu,
senior vice president of research and development for the Implementation Group
at Cadence. "With hundreds of successful tapeouts going to high volumes
of production at almost all mature nodes, from 250 down to now 40 nanometers,
plus increasing demand for 28-nanometer technology, Cadence and TSMC are poised
to offer unique, proven and cost-effective design solutions to mutual customers."
In conjunction with this expanded relationship, Cadence will enhance its support
for TSMC's Open Innovation Platform (OIP), which promotes innovation among the
semiconductor design community, its ecosystem partners and TSMC's portfolio
of products and services.
Posted July 23rd, 2009
