| LONDON — Semiconductor foundry United Microelectronics Corp. has added use of an open source 32-bit Sparc processor to a low-power reference design flow for its 130-nm manufacturing process, the company said Tuesday (Sept. 27). UMC (Hsunchu, Taiwan) said its latest design offering delivers a more predictable path to silicon success and included RTL-to-GDSII flows incorporating the tools from Cadence Design Systems Inc. and Mentor Graphics Corp. The Leon2 was developed by Jiri Gaisler, the founder of Gaisler Research AB (Goteborg, Sweden). The reference flow provides the user with an understanding of the low-power design flow and in-depth DFT using the Leon2 based test chip as a reference design, UMC said. Gaisler began making its processor design available on a commercial basis with the advent of the Leon3 processor (see Feb. 24 story). | 
