Faraday announces its proprietary low power dissipation platform solution - PowerSlash

With Faraday’s PowerSlash™ IP platform solution you could potentially reduce the dynamic power dissipation by 80% and save over 100 times in the static

HSINCHU Taiwan and SUNNYVALE CA, January20, 2005 -- One of the common problems with current IP suppliers is to assume that one can design a low power dissipation IC simply by providing low power IP designs with substrate biasing, sleep modes, or other technologies. But in reality, it is far from the truth. For example, the clock tree may consume more than 50% of the overall dynamic power, which makes low power IPs relatively insignificant in effect. Among the challenges to the low power design, the toughest one is that the designers have little control over the whole factors affecting power consumptions until the end of the design. By then, however, it would be too late to make any effective adjustments. To address this design dilemma, Faraday introduced its PowerSlash™ IP family and design platform that enables designers to anticipate low power design requirements at the beginning of the design cycle that adopts a sequential design methodology from the transistor level, IP level, circuit level, and up to the system level.

Faraday PowerSlash™ low power dissipation platform solution is comprised of a comprehensive IP portfolio including standard cell library, memory (one port, two port, register file and ROM), IO (generic IO & special IO), and analog IPs (PLL, power on reset, voltage detector, oscillator, regulator, USB 1.1, USB 2.0, etc.). All of them are suitable for developing handheld SoCs. In addition, Faraday provides a complete low power dissipation design flow from transistor to system level, including low power process technology, multi-Vt design flow/methodology, substrate biasing, multiple sleep modes, clock gating, power gating, voltage scaling, frequency scaling, multi-voltage island, system power management, etc.

Faraday understands that a single or partial low power solution is simply insufficient to satisfy the performance requirement of our customers. In light of this, the choices within PowerSlash™ enable a full range of customizations to be made according to the nature of the applications. For example: The power requirement for MP3 player and MultiMedidaCard (MMC) is distinctly different. One of MP3 player's key emphases is on the play time, which requires designs with reduced dynamic power; MMC on the other hand is likely to encounter long idle time, which makes it imperative to lower the static power. The key to a successful low power design is therefore depending on the needs of the application. Besides satisfying that need, the PowerSlash™ IP and platform solution is sustained by Faraday's profound IP integration know how and seamless ASIC flow support, securing us an unbeatable stance in the low power design field.

“In this progressive SoC era, one must take into consideration the low power requirements in every step of the IC design; anything less would only yield a disastrous result,” said Hsin Wang, R & D Associate VP at Faraday. “Additionally, a platform solution provider must be able to enhance its customers' uniqueness by fine-tuning their initial specifications. With thousands of successful ASIC projects under our belt, Faraday has distinct advantages over those IP vendors that provide just low power dissipation IPs,” he added.

PowerSlash™ availability

PowerSlash™ low power IP family and design platform will be ready in Q2 2005 using UMC 0.18µm & 0.13µm process technology.

About Faraday Technology Corporation

Faraday Technology Corporation is a leading silicon IP and fabless ASIC vendor. The company's broad IP portfolio includes 32-bit RISC CPUs, DSPs, PHY/Controllers for USB 2.0, Ethernet, Serial ATA and PCI-Express. With more than 500 employees and 2004 revenue of $159 million, Faraday is one of the largest fabless ASIC companies in the Asia-Pacific region, and it also has a significant presence in other markets, world-wide. 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: http://www.faraday-tech.com