Faraday's Low Power Platform Solution Enables its Customers Reaching Volume Production on Hand-Held SoC

Faraday’s Low Power Platform PowerSlash™ with its low power IPs/methodology and UMC foundry process offers a robust low power design environment

SUNNYVALE, California, and HSINCHU, Taiwan – November 28, 2005 -- Faraday Technology announced the successful adoption of its Low power platform solution PowerSlash™ from three valued ASIC customers. All three projects are scheduled for volume production this coming December. The PowerSlash™ project is the collaboration between Faraday, UMC, and Cadence with respective responsibility on silicon IP development & design methodology, muti-Vt standard cell library & memory, and low power design flow. The platform enables customers to easily cut into portable electronic market where low power consumption is not a requirement but necessity.

The growing popularity of the hand-held consumer devices such as MP3, PMP, multi-media devices, etc. has made low power an integral part of modern SoC designs. But real challenge of the modern low power IC designs is that under no circumstance the die size and efficiency should be sacrificed. Faraday's low power platform solution PowerSlash™ is packed with many low power virtual design components, such as low power standard cell library, memory (one port, two port, register file & ROM), I/O (generic I/O & special I/O) and essential analog IPs (PLL, power on reset, voltage detector, oscillator, regulator, USB1.1, USB2.0, etc. But low power IPs alone would not work as well unless they are accompanied with low power design methodology and work flow also. In the design flow front, Faraday adopts multi-Vt design flow, substrate biasing, clock gating, voltage scaling, frequency scaling, voltage island, etc., and in the design methodology front, Faraday's profound ASIC services experiences for 3,000 worldwide customers has been fully integrated into power gating technology and Faraday's proprietary power noise analysis software named PPG-MSV.

One of the three customers who took advantage of Faraday's 0.18µm low power standard cell library on its embedded 802.11g SoC is able to see dynamic power reduction up to 30%. The second customer is delighted to discover that the PowerSlash™ 0.13µm power gating and IP/design methodology successfully reduced its mobile video IC's leakage current and static power at a factor of 1000. The third customer was able to lower the current leakage dramatically by applying the multi-Vt methodology in its mobile phone graphic chip and at the same time achieving the high speed graphic and power saving requirement of the smartphone. The new graphic chip is currently in volume production at Faraday. But the technologies of the PowerSlash™ do not stop here; they have been heavily utilized in many of Faraday's own low power IP development including wireless LAN, ultra low power CPU, USB2.0 OTG, etc.

“We are excited to see customer's achievements in meeting low power requirements using Faraday PowerSlash™ Solution. Faraday is in the perfect position to provide a design environment for hand-held SoCs because we have a comprehensive IP portfolio, years of experience in IC integration, and matured ASIC design methodology,” said Victor Lin, vice president of ASIC Technology at Faraday. “With the ever-growing demands in low power ICs, we will continue in quest of enhancing our low power dissipation IC design technology. We are in the process of fine-tuning the 0.13µm design environment and anticipate a full adoption and volume production by our customers worldwide at end of this year.” Mr. Lin concluded.


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, MPEG4, H.264, PHYs/Controllers for USB 2.0, 10/100 Ethernet, Serial ATA, PCI Express, Cell Library and Memory Compiler. With more than 500 employees and 2004 revenue of US$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 world-wide markets. 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