Amphion fashions ultra-low-power IP cores for video, wireless silicon with sequence powertheater

Santa Clara, California (Sept 25, 2002) – Sequence Design today announced that Belfast, N. Ireland- and San Jose, Calif.-based Amphion Semiconductor, a leading supplier of application-specific cores for digital video and broadband wireless applications, has adopted Sequence’s PowerTheater™ design software to deliver low-power optimized system-level IP solutions for sub-180 nanometer SoC/ASIC and high-density FPGA.

Sequence’s PowerTheater provides accurate RTL power estimation, precise gate-level power verification, and flexible power optimization to help integrated circuit designers minimize power early in the design cycle and verify that power budgets are met. With the introduction of automated IP modeling earlier this year, PowerTheater now enables designers to create detailed power models for IP blocks.

"Every milliwatt counts in megagate core design," commented Stephen Farson, Amphion vice-president of engineering. "PowerTheater represents a time-efficient methodology for low-power design and creation of power models of our special-purpose accelerator architectures. It offers ready verification of Amphion’s performance-obsessed design techniques for creating ultra-low-power core solutions for JPEG2000, MPEG-4, and wireless LAN."

Power Becoming Top Design Issue
"With the ever-increasing complexity of SoC design, power has now become a major concern for leading-edge companies such as Amphion," said Vic Kulkarni, Sequence president and CEO. "IP blocks as diverse as DSP cores, embedded processors, memories, and analog and mixed signal components are routinely integrated on the same silicon. PowerTheater’s analysis capabilities and automatic generation of high-quality IP power models now allow designers to make crucial decisions about packaging and power distribution early in the flow, resulting in better performance, fewer errors, and increased customer satisfaction."

While describing power behavior and creating power models manually is a time-consuming and error-prone process, an automated model generation process from Sequence generates power models quickly and efficiently for discerning customers like Amphion.

About PowerTheater
PowerTheater provides the foundation for a comprehensive SoC power management methodology.
Features include:

* Accurate RTL and gate-level, full-chip power analysis covering all major contributors to power dissipation
* "Zero-Sim" capability enables RTL design for low power without the need for a testbench or simulation
* Flexible and easy-to-use RTL power reduction advisor quantifies real power savings and tradeoffs
* Automated IP power modeling process
* Versatile graphical analysis environment lets designers assess options quickly and intuitively

PowerTheater enjoys considerable momentum in the marketplace with endorsements from users such as Amphion, Sun, and Silicon Metrics, and is integrated into IBM's Blue Logic™ ASIC design system.

About Sequence
Sequence Design, Inc., the SoC Design Closure Company, enables system-on-chip designers to bring higher-performance and lower-power integrated circuits quickly to fabrication. Sequence’s physical design software and solutions give its more than 100 customers the competitive advantage they need to excel in aggressive technology markets, despite demanding complexity and time-to-market issues of sub-180 nanometer designs. Sequence has worldwide development and field service operations. The company was recently named by Reed Electronics as one of the top 50 companies to watch in the electronics industry. Sequence is privately held. Sequence is a member of Cadence Design Systems’ Connections and Mentor Graphics’ Open Door partnership programs. Additional information is available at http://www.sequencedesign.com

About Amphion
Amphion is the leading supplier of application-specific cores for System-on-a-Chip (SoC) integrated circuit designs for multimedia, data security, wireless and broadband communications. Amphion delivers high-performance solutions for video and image compression, advanced encryption, and speech and channel coding with a comprehensive range of silicon-optimized products. Using proprietary techniques to directly map digital signal processing functions and algorithms into hardware, Amphion develops and licenses semiconductor intellectual-property (SIP) cores that are close to optimal in terms of power, cycles, and area – computationally up to several orders of magnitude more efficient than equivalent functions implemented on a programmable processor. Amphion cores operate standalone, or by direct interface to industry-standard RISC and DSP processors, and can be easily migrated through successive generations of fabrication technology, thus preserving engineering investments in SoC design. Amphion is a privately held company with corporate headquarters and engineering in Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK and worldwide sales and marketing headquarters in San Jose, California, USA. Amphion was formerly known as Integrated Silicon Systems Ltd, or ISS. For more information, visit http://www.amphion.com

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