Faraday Adds New Memory Compilers to its miniIP Platform; 70% AC Power Saving and 13% Area Saving without Performance Penalty

Hsinchu, Taiwan and Sunnyvale, California -- August 7, 2006 -- Faraday Technology Corporation (TAIEX: 3035), a leading ASIC and IP provider, today added two new memory compilers to its miniIP™ Platform portfolio, a collection of full-function essential IPs with drastically reduced area and power consumption. The new ultra-low-power single-port SRAM compiler (miniRAM™) and ROM compiler (miniViaROM™) achieve more than 70% AC power saving and 13% die size saving without any performance losses.

SoC designs contain an increasing number of embedded RAM and read only memory (ROM) blocks, making memories a dominant component in SoCs. According to an ITRS research report, by 2008 more than 80% of the size of SoCs will be packed with embedded memories, up from today's 50%. As a result, embedded memories not only are responsible for the biggest part of the chip cost, but also consume the most power. To help customers reduce chip's cost and power consumption on the most critical part, Faraday redesigned the memory architecture to dramatically reduce power and enhance density of the embedded memory blocks, while making no sacrifice on the chip performance.

“We are very excited about the latest memory compilers, which can help customers reduce up to 70% AC power and 13% die cost,” said Hsin Wang, Associate Vice President of IP Business and Technology at Faraday Technology. “The two new ultra-low-power RAM and ROM compilers will be a big plus to our popular miniIP platform, which has been adopted by many portable video and audio consumer products.”

Faraday miniIP Platform Availability
Faraday's miniRAM (FSA0A_D_SL) and miniViaROM (FSA0A_D_SP) are available in UMC 0.18um GII process immediately. Other ultra low power and high density miniIP components including standard cell library (miniLib™), general purpose I/Os (miniIO™), phase-locked loop (miniPLL™), and diffusion ROM (miniROM™) are available in UMC 0.13um and 0.18um processes and have been mass production proven in numerous ASIC and IP customer projects.

Table1. SRAM Benchmark

8kx8	FSA 0A _D_SL	UMC 0.18um GII generic SP SRAM
Taa (ns, Worst case)	3.09	3.83
Tcyc (ns, Worst case)	3.77	4.77
AC power (mA/MHz, Typ)	0.030 (71% saving)	0.103
Standby power (uA, Typ)	3.601	3.864
Area (mm_sq)	0.375 (13% saving)	0.431

Table2. ROM benchmark

32kx8	FSA0A _D_SP	UMC 0.18um GII generic ROM
Taa (ns, Worst case)	4.12	4.2
Tcyc (ns, Worst case)	4.29	4.85
AC power (mA/MHz, Typ)	0.02 (55% saving)	0.044
Standby power (uA, Typ)	< 1	< 1
Area (mm_sq)	0.298 (13% saving)	0.343

 
About Faraday Technology Corporation

Faraday Technology Corporation is a leading silicon IP and fabless ASIC vendor. The company's broad SIP portfolio includes 32-bit RISC CPUs, DSPs, MPEG4, H.264, PHYs/Controllers for USB 2.0, 10/100 Ethernet, Serial ATA, PCI Express, Cell Library and Memory Compiler. With more than 650 employees and 2005 revenue of US$175 million, Faraday is one of the largest fabless ASIC companies in the Asia-Pacific region, and it also has a significant presence in other world-wide markets. Headquartered in Taiwan , Faraday has service and support offices around the world, including the U.S. , Japan , Europe, and China . For more information, please visit :www.faraday-tech.com

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