Magma RTL-to-GDSII implementation selected by Mellanox for 40-nm multimillion-gate communications ICs

SAN JOSE, USA: Magma Design Automation Inc. announced that Mellanox Technologies, a leading supplier of end-to-end connectivity solutions for servers and storage that optimize data center performance, has selected the Talus 1.1 RTL-to-GDSII implementation system to be included in its 40-nanometer (nm) IC design flow.

A long-time user of Magma software, Mellanox Technologies upgraded to the latest version of Talus after an extensive evaluation proved its ability to deliver optimum power and performance on multimillion-gate designs.

"Mellanox Technologies' chips are complex and typically contain 10 million gates or more," said Premal Buch, general manager of Magma's Design Implementation Business Unit.

"When the company migrated to 40-nm processes, minimizing area and reducing power and tape-out time continued to be key goals. With the new Talus Flow Manager, COre (Concurrent optimizing routing engine) technology, high capacity and proven performance across 50 40-nm designs, Talus 1.1 is the best solution for these advanced ICs."

"Over the past four years, we have taped out multiple complex chips that support high-speed InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnects using Magma's software," said Shai Cohen, vice president of operations and engineering at Mellanox Technologies.

Talus 1.1: Fastest path to silicon for 45-/40-nm chips
The Talus system was built to anticipate the unique requirements of chip design at advanced process nodes, and Talus 1.1 takes its capabilities even further. Since its availability was announced in May 2009, Magma customers have found Talus 1.1 to deliver significant improvements in runtime and timing convergence.

It also achieves timing closure with no design-rule checking (DRC) violations and reduces total chip area significantly. Talus also offers a significant capacity advantage over competing systems which allows design teams to work on much larger blocks during the design process.

Talus Flow Manager: Improved ease of use with out-of-the-box flows
Talus 1.1 introduces the new Talus Flow Manager that provides an out-of-the-box RTL-to-GDSII design flow tuned to deliver optimal results. Designers can easily customize the reference flow and tailor it to their own needs, developing specific flows for various projects or applications.

Additional reference flows include templates for the implementation of multiple-voltage (MVdd), multiple-mode and multiple-corner (MMMC) designs, as well as low-power and high-performance designs. Ease of use and cost of adoption is dramatically improved through the use of these pre-qualified flows.