Dolphin Integration: A Commercial Breakthrough for 'Reduced Cell Stem Libraries'

Grenoble, May 12, 2008 -- Upon launching against all odds, the daring RCSL concept of "Reduced Cell Stem Libraries" for Standard Cells, through a partnership with the Swiss Research Center CSEM, a series of design wins at diverse Fabless customers have proven its worth under the brand name of SESAME.

The traditional CCSL approach of "Complex Cell Set Libraries" mingling all sorts of performance optimizations are facing the dead-end of advanced technological processes, where the complexity of characterization is exploding. The novelty of SESAME is to provide consistent "cell stems" ultimately optimized for each voltage and performance islet possible within a SoC. A number of such optimized SoCs embedding diverse library stems, are already in volume fabrication at diverse processes and foundries. In cases where optimizations are under constraint (e.g. minimal area but with a speed limit) the respective stems can be composed efficiently.

The offering of a RCSL comes timely with the growing diversity of technological process nodes: "Cost reduction with Dolphin Integration’s SESAME results from its simple structure facilitating controlled optimization at both the Synthesis and Place-and-route stages, and we appreciate being among the first to benefit from this timely innovation”, says Mr. C.C. TSAI, CTO of Himax in Taiwan.

Indeed, more and more companies are searching for such a differentiator in view of customer requests, either for lowering power consumption or for reducing silicon costs, and selecting SESAME serves to obtain a better market pull.

Further stems, with a variety of optimization criteria, are in development for all technological nodes between 250 and 65 nanometers.

About Dolphin

Dolphin Integration is up to their charter as the most adaptive creator in Microelectronics to "enable mixed signal Systems-on-Chip", with a quality management stimulating reactivity for innovation.
Their current mission is to supply worldwide customers with fault-free, high-yield and reliable sets of CMOS Virtual Components, resilient to noise and drastic for low power-consumption, together with engineering assistance and product evolutions customized to their needs.
More information on SESAME at:  http://www.dolphin.fr/sesame

About Himax

Himax Technologies, Inc. (Himax) is a fabless Driver IC Design company founded on June 12, 2001. Headquartered in Tainan (a city in southern Taiwan), Himax has branch offices in Hsinchu and Taipei, with technical support offices in Japan, Korea, and China.

Himax designs, develops, and markets complete driver IC solutions (for example, gate drivers, source drivers, timing controllers, and operational amplifiers) for various TFT-LCD applications, including handsets, digital still cameras (DSCs), camcorders, car navigators, portable DVD players, note book computers, monitors, and TVs.