EE Times - July 17, 2006 - (Page 1) The industry newsweekly for the creators of technology ISSUE 1432 WWW.EETIMES.COM MONDAY, JULY 17, 2006 EDA upstart rolls `litho driven' router Sierra challenges field's giants by targeting `discontinuities' at 65 nm By Richard Goering Santa Cruz, Calif. Setting its sights on the big leagues, Sierra Design Automation Inc. will come to next week's Design Automation Conference DAC with a netlist-to-GDSII IC implementation sys- tem that includes a lithography driven Pushing past trials, WiMax detailed routing capability. In so doing, the young company is challenging a place- ment-and-routing ecosystem dominated by three much larger players and must footprint grows answer the question of whether there is room for one more. Sierra this week will roll out Olympus- SoC, an IC placement-and-routing system that claims to address lithography varia- tions and multiple-mode, multiple-corner By Loring Wirbel timing closure within a high-capacity data- Such large, high-profile invest- $600 million into a WiMax carrier W iMax stands poised to grad- base. Even though it lacks RTL synthesis, ments could cause a chain reac- startup founded by Craig McCaw. The willingness of Intel Capital to uate from trial islands of the product presents a direct challenge to tion, getting Sprint to make its plans place a huge bet on Kirkland, Wash.- ser vice to a true broadband the three providers of RTL-to-GDSII imple- clear and getting smaller carriers to based Clearwire Corp. propels the access alternative for subscribers. mentation systems: Synopsys Inc., Ca- make some concrete decisions on WiMax deployment, said Phil Solis, new carrier into a position analogous Already, 25 percent of Seoul, South dence Design Systems Inc. and Magma broadband wireless analyst at ABI to Sprint Nextel, the only traditional Korea, is covered by an expanding Design Automation Inc. Research Inc. U.S. carrier to show near-term interest WiBro wireless broadband serv- Sierra is barely out of the startup phase. A global look at WiMax develop- in the IEEE's 802.16 standard. Motoro- ice. No wonder, then, that Intel Corp. The Santa Clara, Calif., company launched la Inc. also invested in Clearwire. decided early this month to plow CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 CO N T I N U E D ON PAGE 6 Inside Plug pulled '06 on comms RTool trends . . . Page 22 interconnect RWhat's hot . . . Page 22 By Rick Merritt RThe interview . Page 24 Cadence CTO Ted Cadence San Jose, Calif. Intel Corp. might Vucurevich answers REvent lineup . . Page 26 have handily established its X86 proces- our questions, p. 24 sors and PCI Express interconnect as dominant computing technologies, but the world's biggest chip maker is taking a clobbering in the communications sector, where its Advanced Switching Interconnect ASI is in full retreat. PERIODICALS Intel and a handful of other chip mak- ers have quietly pulled the plug on plans to build products with Advanced Switch- ing, a variation of PCI Express for com- munications and embedded systems. ASI was supposed to pave the way for CO N T I N U E D ON PAGE 16 http://WWW.EETIMES.COM Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of EE Times - July 17, 2006 Inside Wrong question, wrong layer Virtual, physical IC test gets cost-conscious Optical unit smooths DVD format bumps Revisions affect gear exports to China BytheNumbers Crosstalk Startup promises to rev simulation Magma rolls integrated tool flow for DFM Single-chip phone heads for handsets Magnetic resonance tied to superconduction Denser memory options speed systems Teardown - 4-Gbit NAND is built at 65 nanometers ArtofDesign Tips&tricks - Ensuring low-power design success at 65 nm Analog ICs - Analog front ends take integration route EE Times - July 17, 2006 http://www.nxtbookMEDIA.com
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