Sequence Design’s CoolPower technology was used by NVIDIA Corporation in the recently announced GeForce 8800 GT design, a 65nm 754-million-transistor GPU.
Advanced CoolPower accelerated chip timing closure was used in the NVIDIA design by utilizing unique top level timing budgeting. CoolPower’s fast noise analysis mode, with early stage noise fixing, accelerated the signal-integrity optimization. Timing and optimization for the GeForce 8800 GT was accomplished within a very compact 128G footprint.
“Working with Sequence not only helped us meet our frequency goals, but also allowed us to achieve outstanding power-reduction results,” said Calist Friedman, NVIDIA VLSI design manager. “CoolPower is capable of handling large-capacity designs, and is unique in its ability to analyze and optimize interdependent electrical effects concurrently, reducing iterations.”
“NVIDIA has been a very important partner for Sequence for advancing our foundation technology,” according to Vic Kulkarni, Sequence president and CEO. “Over the last several years, Sequence and NVIDIA have worked together to validate CoolPower’s powerful algorithms in one of the most demanding production environments. We are already working on the next generation technology which will further accelerate NVIDIA’s future graphics processors beyond 65nm.”
NVIDIA has used Sequence Design’s CoolPower in more than 36 tapeouts of some of the most complex multimedia designs ever, including the new 754 million-transistor, 1.8GHz, GeForce® 8800 GT.
About Cool Products
Sequence’s Cool Products family – CoolTime, CoolPower, and CoolCheck – cut design closure times by preventing time-consuming iterations between separate timing, SI, power analysis and optimization tools.
CoolTime, the industry’s most accurate dynamic voltage drop analysis and optimization solution, concurrently analyzes timing, signal integrity, static IR drop, and electromigration. CoolPower includes automated power, timing, and signal integrity optimization features. Both leakage and dynamic power can be automatically optimized using CoolPower’s multi-Vt cell swapping and cell resizing, and its MTCMOS power gating optimization slashes leakage power up to 100X or more. CoolCheck enables effective power grid debug early in the flow with a fast vectorless technique for finding high resistive connectivity of standard cells and macros.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation is the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies. The Company creates innovative, industry-changing products for computing, consumer electronics, and mobile devices. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com.
About Sequence
Sequence Design accelerates the ability of SoC designers to bring high-performance, power-aware ICs quickly to market. Sequence’s power and signal-integrity software solutions give customers the competitive advantage necessary to excel in aggressive technology markets. For more information: sequencedesign.com.