Synopsys IP move shows China, analog in the driver's seat

Rick Merritt, EE Times
(09/05/2006 8:09 PM EDT)
 
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Synopsys Inc. said Tuesday (Sept. 5). it is making the heart of its mixed-signal intellectual property (IP) available for the 130-nm process of foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) in Shanghai. The move shows both China and analog are driving growth in new chip designs.

Synopsys now has cores available in the SMIC process for PCI Express, Serial ATA, USB and XAUI. The move was driven largely by "quite a lot of demand" from consumer OEMs in China wanting USB cores and computer OEMs asking for PCI Express cores for ExpressCard products, said Navraj Nandra, director product marketing for mixed-signal IP at Synopsys.

The company supports as many as 30 different fab processes for its USB cores, including TSMC and the 65-nm process of the IBM/Chartered alliance. The group is also working with SMIC to bring the cores to the fab's 90-nm process.