IMEC, Europe's leading independent nanoelectronics research institute, today announced that QUALCOMM, a leading developer and innovator of advanced wireless technologies and mobile data solutions, has joined IMEC's technology-aware design program (TAD). IMEC and QUALCOMM will be collaborating on innovative circuit and system design methodologies.
Due to the increased variability observed in aggressively scaled devices and interconnects, use of innovative circuit and system design methodologies become increasingly necessary. IMEC has set up the Technology-Aware Design (TAD) program to develop design solutions that address these (sub-)45nm scaling challenges.
The TAD R&D program is focused on development of advanced analysis techniques that model process variability to enable designers to optimize the entire system design for energy and yield. This program will develop a methodology that propagates variability (and reliability) data from technology level to device and circuit level and all the way up to system architecture level. The ultimate goal is to enable manufacturing-aware sign-off of predicted process variability at system design level. The methodology will be built on top of commercial design tools and flows.
"We are very pleased that QUALCOMM acknowledges the strength of our TAD program. This proves the value of our solution which starts at an earlier stage in the design flow than is being offered today by design for manufacturing solutions," said Rudy Lauwereins, Vice President Nomadic Embedded Systems at IMEC.
"As a part of our 'Integrated Fabless Manufacturing' business model, we are continually working to deliver the highest functionality at the best cost structure with our products," said Behrooz Abdi, senior vice president and general manager for QUALCOMM CDMA Technologies. "We are pleased to be a part of IMEC's TAD program, collaborating on next-generation design flows and ultimately optimizing results."
The TAD program is an industrial affiliation program that is part of IMEC's recently launched Apollo research program. Apollo is the successor of IMEC's M4 (multi-mode multimedia) program and tackles the major technological challenges for ubiquitous embedded systems that will hit the market in 2011 and beyond.