Press Release

Apache Addresses Critical Area of Power and Thermal Management in UMC’s 90nm Reference Design

Apache’s RedHawk and Sahara-PTE provide power sign-off and thermal analysis for 90nm reference designs

Mountain View, Calif. – March 6, 2007 – Apache Design Solutions, the leader in power signoff and complete silicon integrity platform solutions for system-on-chip (SoC) designs, today announced that UMC’s 90nm reference design utilized Apache’s:

• RedHawk-EV for full-chip static-IR, VCD and vectorless dynamic voltage drop, and electromigration (EM) analysis
• Sahara-PTE for full-chip thermal analysis and thermal variation on leakage, timing, and reliability

“Apache delivers key technologies required to address the design challenges at 90nm and below,” said Ken Liou, director of the IP and Design Support division at UMC. “Accuracy and ease-of-use of RedHawk and Sahara are the key reasons why UMC has decided to add Apache to our list of supported tools for power and thermal analysis.”

Power integrity and thermal integrity has become one of the key design challenges, as process nodes move toward 90nm and below. Power noise such as dynamic voltage drop and ground bounce, as well as temperature variation can have significant impact on silicon’s leakage, timing, and reliability. The traditional method of over-designing and guard-banding is no longer sufficient to detect potential power and timing issues prior to tapeout. Apache’s RedHawk for power signoff and Sahara-PTE for power-thermal-electrical analysis deliver the industry’s only silicon integrity platform solution for 90nm and below process technologies.

“UMC is one of the leading drivers for industry’s advanced flow requirements and we are pleased to see RedHawk and Sahara as key components of the UMC 90nm reference design flow,” said Andrew Yang, CEO of Apache. “The collaboration between Apache and UMC benefits our mutual customers and allows us to address their power integrity and thermal management issues for silicon success.”

Availability
The UMC/Apache reference design flow is available now and can be accessed from UMC's website at http://my.umc.com/.

Apache Design Solutions, NSPICE, RedHawk, PsiWinder, Sahara-PTE, and Vectorless Dynamic are trademarks of Apache Design Solutions, Inc.

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