Cadence Design Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS), the leader in global electronic design innovation, announced today that Netronome, a leading supplier of highly programmable semiconductor products used for intelligent flow processing in network and communications devices, has adopted and deployed a full range of Cadence® products to design, verify and implement its complex network flow processor.
"We use Cadence solutions almost exclusively because they enable us to design and produce our products with the highest levels of technical correctness and performance," said Jim Finnegan, senior vice president of silicon engineering at Netronome. "Our product is very complex -- a 65-nanometer geometry with 40 cores running at 1.4GHz -- and the Cadence technology was important to our success, especially the full-chip emulation capability of the Palladium System. Our next-generation silicon, already under design, will take advantage of the next, smaller geometry manufacturing processes, and the ability of the Cadence products to comprehend the effects of the smaller geometries will be even more important."
Netronome's solutions include tightly integrated network flow processors and acceleration cards that scale to more than 20Gbps per second. They are used in carrier-grade and enterprise-class communications products, as well as virtualized servers and appliances that require deep packet inspection, flow analysis and content processing, all at very high speeds for millions of simultaneous flows.
For the NFP-32xx, Netronome used a broad array of Cadence solutions and methodologies, including technology for custom IC design, digital design, logic, place and route, verification and services. The company said the suite of Cadence products deployed -- from the Virtuoso®, Encounter® and Incisive® product groups -- delivered the quality, testability, visibility and coverage it needed to tape out with confidence. Netronome pointed to the Incisive® Palladium® emulation system, in particular, as valuable for enabling engineers to thoroughly and efficiently test the quality of their design, including using real-world software to prove compatibility. In addition, Netronome cited as essential to its success the Open Verification Methodology (OVM) and broad verification IP portfolio (VIP) in conjunction with the expertise provided by Cadence Services.
"Netronome is engaged in cutting-edge chip design and recognized early on the benefits, in quality and efficiencies, it could receive by relying on Cadence for the full range of design, verification and implementation technology," said Ziv Binyamini, corporate vice president of Front End Solutions at Cadence. "We look forward to working with the Netronome team in the future as smaller geometries bring greater design challenges."