Virage Logic expands semicon IP portfolio with silicon-proven SiANA analog IP offering

SOC SUMMIT; TAIPEI, TAIWAN: Virage Logic Corp. has announced the expansion of its broad semiconductor IP product portfolio with the introduction of SiANA, a new offering of silicon-proven analog IP components essential for building multimedia consumer electronics devices.

Comprising of clock sources, data converters, and sensor circuits, the product-proven, area efficient, high performance SiANA IP offering is designed for low power in TSMC’s 40, 65, and 90-nanometer (nm) process nodes. The portfolio provides the essential building blocks for general purpose System-on-Chip (SoC) implementations, as well as precision subsystems for multimedia and communications.

"With the new SiANA analog IP portfolio, Virage Logic can now provide the essential building blocks in a wide range of multimedia and communications analog systems," said Joshua Rom, vice president and general manager of Virage Logic’s Analog Solutions business unit.

"The offering includes analog IF interfaces suitable for 2.5G, 3G, GPS, DVB-T, DVB-H, S-DMB, WiFi, WiMAX, WHDi-1.5, WiBro, and other telephony and data communications, as well as CD quality audio and RGB, component, S-video, and composite video applications. Because these IP components were initially developed by Research and Development teams at NXP and Philips Electronics, the offering is product proven in a wide range of process nodes."

Rom concluded, "Because customization plays an essential role in the analog IP business, we provide integrated and hardened analog front-end blocks, delivering a single GDSII for audio, video or IF system solutions."

"We named Virage Logic as our early development partner on the 40nm process node in 2007 and worked closely with them to ensure early adopter customers had access to quality IP when we first introduced our 40nm process," said Shauh-Teh Juang, senior director of Design Infrastructure Marketing Division at TSMC. "The availability of a complete line of silicon proven 40nm analog IP underscores how our longstanding partnership with Virage Logic benefits our mutual customers."

"Virage Logic’s customers benefit from the convenience of working with a single broadline supplier of silicon-proven IP to help accelerate their SoC development. This now extends beyond the previous Virage Logic portfolio of memory-related IP to embrace analog functionality," said Rich Wawrzyniak, senior analyst for ASIC and SoC at Semico Research.

"From a design point of view, the ability to obtain more highly-differentiated IP from a single source can reduce the time spent in finding and qualifying other IP vendors for the other functions every SoC needs. This also extends to the needs of the design team for obtaining support functions from the IP vendor after the initial licensing phase is over. Obtaining more varied, high-performance IP from a single source increases the efficiency of SoC design teams because they can concentrate their time on doing designs instead of hunting for the right IP to fit their needs."

According to Semico Research, the analog IP market grew 7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, recovering from a negative growth in the first half of the year. Semico believes the analog IP market will show at least 15 percent growth for 2010 compared with the previous year and continue with strong positive growth through 2015.

The rise in the use of analog IP in complex SoC designs is attributable to the increasing need of these silicon solutions to move beyond purely digital functions and to interface more fully with the outside world, which is analog in nature. IP companies that have strong analog product portfolios are of increasing value to SoC design teams who must add more analog functionality to meet changing market requirements for their silicon solutions.