Carbon Design Systems Performance, Power Analysis Tools Added to TSMC Reference Flow 12.0

ACTON, MA--(Marketwire - Jun 2, 2011) - AT 48th DAC BOOTH #1914 -- Carbon Design Systems™, the leading supplier of solutions for architectural analysis, performance optimization and pre-silicon firmware debug, today announced that TSMC has added its SoC Designer Plus to TSMC Reference Flow 12.0 targeting TSMC's most advanced 28nm process technology.

These tools support performance and power analysis at the electronic system level (ESL) and register transfer level, while providing a platform for pre-silicon software development.

"We are pleased to introduce Carbon Design System's SoC Designer Plus to the TMSC Reference Flow 12, a critical component of our 28nm design infrastructure," said Suk Lee, director of Design Infrastructure Marketing at TSMC. "The Carbon tools will help our customers make the correct power and performance trade-offs, as well as develop and validate their software, early in the design flow, reducing design cycle time and creating more confidence before going into fabrication."

SoC Designer Plus enables users to create a complete virtual platform for:

• Creating and simulating SoC systems representing all of the hardware and software components in the system
• Generating and characterizing performance and profile information in a realistic environment running real software
• Validating embedded software and firmware against the hardware models
• Dynamically swapping between behavioral (LT) and cycle accurate models

Carbon Model Studio enables users to compile RTL designs into high-speed cycle-accurate models that can be used to:

• Simulate implementation-accurate behavior for performance characterization
• Validate embedded software against final implementation

Combining implementation-accurate models generated from Carbon Model Studio with analysis and profiling capabilities of SoC Designer Plus provides an accurate, system-level platform to characterize performance and power, two vital pieces needed to develop a chip. Understanding these factors early in the design cycle is critical for making the correct trade-offs in the design and architecture of an SoC. In addition, the same platform can be used to develop and validate the project's embedded software enabling the software team to get a head-start on their development.

Using Carbon's Swap & Play technology enables Carbon users to develop software on a fast platform and then switch to cycle accuracy at any point when power or performance data is needed.

"Understanding the trade-offs between power and performance early in the design cycle is critical to a project's success for embedded applications," stated Andy Ladd, Carbon's vice president of Applications and Methodology. "Not only do users need accurate power data, but they need to generate it in a realistic environment that represents how the final system will run. The accuracy of Carbon models combined with the realistic system behavior provided by SoC Designer Plus achieves both."

Carbon Design Systems will demonstrate the integration of SoC Designer Plus into TSMC Reference Flow 12.0 in Booth #1914 at the 48th Design Automation Conference (DAC) June 6-8 at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, Calif.

About Carbon Design Systems

Carbon offers the industry's only unified virtual platform solution along with the leading solution for accurate IP model creation. Carbon virtual platforms can execute at 100s of MIPS and with 100% accuracy to enable application software development, detailed architectural analysis and secure IP model distribution. Carbon's solutions are based on open industry standards, including SystemC, IP-XACT, Verilog, VHDL, OSCI TLM, MDI, CASI, CADI and CAPI. Carbon's customers are systems, semiconductor, and IP companies that focus on wireless, networking, and consumer electronics. Carbon is headquartered at 125 Nagog Park, Acton, Mass., 01720. Telephone: (978) 264-7300. Facsimile: (978) 264-9990. Email: info@carbondesignsystems.com. Website: www.carbondesignsystems.com.

Carbon Design Systems is a trademark of Carbon Design Systems Inc. Carbon acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services.