Toshiba Adopts Barcelona's Analog Synthesis Solutions

Update: Barcelona has been bought by Synopsys

Barcelona to provide synthesizable PLL circuits for Toshiba's SoC, ASIC foundry and standard products

Newark, Calif., September 17, 2003 - Barcelona Design Inc. announced today that Toshiba Corporation has licensed Barcelona's analog synthesis solutions, including its Miró™ PLL circuit model and process models for Toshiba's 0.13-micron and 90-nanometer processes.

Barcelona is the first and only vendor to combine deep design expertise with deterministic synthesis algorithms to deliver real analog synthesis. Barcelona responds to a severe crisis caused by exploding demand for application-specific analog circuits that need an automated approach to meet customers' tight design windows. The company employs a novel approach to capture design intent in process-portable models, which allows extremely rapid synthesis of circuits to the right spec on the right process node in hours rather than weeks or months.

"Barcelona's analog synthesis solution helps support our growing demand for custom systems-on-chip (SoC) designs integrating several PLLs that must be custom designed each time to optimize performance. The need for an analog synthesis solution becomes even more critical for our current 90-nm processes to achieve higher levels of integration and lower costs," said Richard Tobias, vice president, ASIC and Foundry business unit, System LSI Group, Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. "Barcelona's synthesizable PLL is a good fit for our SoCs for network, storage and consumer applications."

"Barcelona's analog synthesis solutions allow Toshiba's System LSI Design Division to enjoy tremendous productivity increases and meet our analog-in-SoC specifications. Adopting a solution that delivers robust circuits in a deterministic fashion will free up our analog designers for innovative activities," added Takashi Yoshimori, technology executive at Toshiba Corporation Semiconductor Company. "We expect Barcelona's analog synthesis to dramatically drive up return on assets company-wide, through the proliferation of rapidly synthesized circuits."

"We are extremely pleased that Toshiba, a global semiconductor leader, has picked Barcelona as its analog design solution for meeting customer needs on spec and on time," said Thomas Heydler, Barcelona's CEO. "This is yet one more validation that our analog synthesis solution is the most effective method for meeting the need for optimized application-specific circuits. Our fusion of design expertise and design automation break analog time-to-market bottlenecks, which will only intensify as companies like Toshiba move to more advanced technology nodes."

About Barcelona Design, Inc.

Barcelona is the first and only vendor delivering real analog synthesis solutions to SoC designers, allowing semiconductor companies to break time-to-market bottlenecks and meet the explosive demand for analog-in-SoC. Real analog synthesis is the fusion of design expertise and novel design automation into readily synthesizable circuit models. Unlike merchant and in-house analog IP, synthesizable analog circuits offer dramatic return on assets due to their process-portability and broad applications range. Compared to traditional analog design tools, analog synthesis increases productivity by orders of magnitude because it is always on time and on spec with minimal labor and capital expenditures. The company offers silicon-proven Op Amp, PLL and Data Converter synthesis models on numerous processes, including foundry partners TSMC and UMC, and IDM processes. Barcelona's customers include Analog Devices, Matsushita, Nvidia, ST Microelectronics and Toshiba. Barcelona's investors include Sequoia Capital, Foundation Capital, Crosslink Capital and Joe Costello, former CEO of Cadence Design Systems. The firm is headquartered in Newark, CA. For more information please visit www.barcelonadesign.com.