Sigma Design Leverages Tekton to Accelerate Runtime and Reduce Hardware Costs for Static Timing Analysis

Magma Design Automation announced Sigma Designs (Nasdaq: SIGM), a leading provider of system-on-chip (SoC) solutions used to deliver entertainment and control throughout the home, has adopted Tekton™ for its next-generation media processor SoCs. Sigma Designs selected Magma’s new static timing analysis (STA) platform because it offers significantly higher capacity and dramatically faster runtimes without sacrificing accuracy.

With advanced process nodes, large numbers of process corners are not uncommon. Analysis of these corners is very computationally intensive because all the paths in the design need calculation with different parasitic information for each corner. By utilizing Tekton’s unique multi-mode/multi-corner analysis capability, Sigma Designs engineers are able to run all their modes and corners on a single machine with just a single Tekton license. Recently, Sigma used Tekton on a 500,000-instance block targeted for one of its latest SoC designs. For the target process node, timing analysis was required on eight process corners with two functional modes. Tekton accomplished the required analysis in a single STA run that took only 20 minutes.

“Our customers demand high-performance, affordably priced chips that offer innovative new features,” said Jacques Martinella, vice president of engineering of Sigma Designs. “To meet these demands and tight market windows we need design and analysis solutions that allow us to reduce our development costs and turnaround time. With Tekton, our static timing analysis runtimes are truly exceptional and we are able to analyze a large number of scenarios on a single low-cost machine, which helps us dramatically shorten our turnaround time and reduce the number of licenses and amount of hardware we need.”

“Tekton was specifically architected to address the increasing complexity of today’s designs,” said Premal Buch, general manager of Magma’s Design Implementation Business Unit. “Based on this new architecture, Tekton provides our customers with best-in-class performance for very large designs with sign-off accuracy. Tekton’s unique multi-mode/multi-corner analysis on a single machine has allowed customers like Sigma to produce chips faster at reduced cost.”