( DAC 02 Item 7 ) ----------------------------------------------- [ 9/10/02 ]
Subject: Sequence PowerTheatre, Power Compiler, Iota, ChipVision, Multigig
RTL POWER PLANNING: The fact that Synplicity, the leading FPGA synthesis
vendor, aquired Iota, surprized quite a few EDA watchers. "I guess this
means that Ken's serious about going into ASIC synthesis, then," is one of
the comments I heard at a DAC party.
"We use Power Compiler all the time. Usually a very reliable tool, but
we've had some backannotation issues and other strange buggy issues
recently. We would like to see more Synopsys support (app notes,
research etc) for this tool."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We have used Synopsys Power Compiler on a 150 KGates design in 0.13 um
running at 225 MHz. It is doing a great job with no designer time
overhead. This design has been done with Synopsys PhysOpt 2001.08.
The problem is that the clock tree was hard to finalize in the Cadence
CTGen tool. Maybe it could have been easier if Synopsys Clock Tree
Compiler was available at this time. Not sure about that."
- Pascal Gouedo of STMicroelectronics
"I looked at Synopsys power tools about a year ago. They seemed like
they'd be fun if you had lots of money and time to play..."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We have been looking at Sequence PowerTheater and have had nothing but
problems with it. I'll be very surprised if we buy it. From talking
to a user here our problems are due to our using VHDL and not Verilog."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"20.0 Power Tools
Sequence Design got the old Sente tools during the mergers that created
that company. These are now being replaced by PowerTheater Analyst and
PowerTheater Designer, which do analysis and design of low power
circuits (who woulda thunk it). As with the tools they replace, they
emphasize RTL level design changes as having the biggest effect on
power.
ASC sells a tool that does power optimization based on behavioral RTL.
They claim up to a 90% power reduction.
Synplicity, the FPGA synthesis leader, acquired Iota Technology shortly
before DAC, so it's hard to tell what products will be pushed.
Synplicity bought them because all the things they do with signal
integrity, supply drop, etc. are issues foreign to the FPGA world, so
their tools should help Synplicity with their invasion of the ASIC
world.
ChipVision sells Orinoco, a tool for RTL and algorithmic power
analysis. Like some of the design planning tools, it first creates
a library of big RTL building blocks with power characterized from a
Synopsys .lib file, then reads the activity data from C simulation.
Multigig had a scheme for clock generation that uses a transmission
line loop instead of a PLL. They said it had very low jitter and used
maybe one third the power of a PLL. The one minor problem is that the
frequency is fixed at manufacture and is different for every die.
They can vary it slightly, but there is no way to synchronize two
different chips. I may be wrong but this sounds like one of those
university ideas that should stay in a university."
- John Weiland of Intrinsix
"We are mainly supporting Sequence PowerTheater for power consumption
analysis and Synopsys Power Compiler for synthesis. Getting accurate
estimates for power on silicon without simulation is still a problem,
tentatively addressed by "static analysis option" in PowerTheater."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Looks to me Iota’s power tool has the most complete analysis feature
and hence can do a lot better job achieving first pass success."
- Weikai Sun of Volterra
"Power Planning tools are a different ball game. Tools are either
front end power optimization and calculation tools or analysis tools
(post power planning) in the backend. What you really need is
something that can go the next step and actually do a power grid
design for you in the physical domain based on the netlist and the
floorplan."
- Jai Durgam of SiImage
"Currently looking at PowerTheater."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"We have been using Sequence tools. But our recent comparison between
Synopsys PrimePower and Sequence's PowerTheater showed us that the
power estimation numbers are close while PrimePower was a lot faster
than PowerTheater. Please treat me anon for the power analysis tools.
I think Sequence will not be happy that we're not buying their tools."
- [ An Anon Engineer ]
"Regarding power designing tools, we use PowerTheater from Sequence and
MarsRail from Avanti/Synopsys. Synopsys people says AstroRail is much
faster than MarsRail, so we are planning to benchmark it."
- Zenji Oka of Ricoh
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