True Circuits Attends Design Automation Conference, Celebrates 20 Years of Timing Excellence!

June 25-27, 2018, Moscone Convention Center, West Hall, Booth #1425

Who

True Circuits, Inc. (TCI), a leading provider of analog and mixed-signal intellectual property (IP) for the semiconductor, systems and electronics industries.

What

At the Design Automation Conference (DAC), True Circuits will showcase its complete line of high performance and general purpose PLL and DLL IP, as well as its innovative and flexible DDR 4/3 PHY. True Circuits is also celebrating its 20^th year in business!

TCI had its humble beginnings in early 1998, with a small but highly motivated team working out of a conference room at its initial customer. The challenge in these early days of the IP industry was to convince big companies they could confidently license analog timing IP from a small company. TCI quickly realized that it had to devise a family of standardized timing IP to cover a variety of chip applications, offer customization to address existing legacy requirements and focus on quality to make IP integration and testing seamless. With the goal of supporting many customers, ever changing interface standards and any foundry/IDM process, TCI took the dramatic decision to develop many of its own CAD tools to eventually automate all aspects of the design flow.

With the hard work and dedication of many talented employees over the last 20 years, TCI has implemented a highly automated design environment that has allowed us to easily support many IP design types (PLLs, DLLs, DDR PHYs), all major foundries and most IDM processes and process variants, and hundreds of semiconductor customers and design partners from 0.25um to 7nm. With a global customer base covering a wide spectrum of chip applications and many billions of chips working in the field, True Circuits is immensely proud of what we have accomplished and the impact we have had on the semiconductor industry.

True Circuits has always measured our success by the success of our customers. Over the past 20 years, we have had the privilege of working on the most prevalent consumer electronic products and the challenge of meeting the toughest requirements, but it has always been the learning and the relationships we have developed with our customers and partners that means the most to us. Please stop by our booth to say hi and share some memories from the years gone by. We would be happy to talk about the future as well!

In addition to celebrating 20 years of timing excellence, True Circuits will discuss a number of topics that should be helpful to chip managers and designers, including IP selection, IP integration, IP reuse, jitter specifications and silicon testing.

John Maneatis, Ph.D., True Circuits' President, will make a brief presentation on how TCI uses automation to take the pain out of IP porting at the OIP Theater in TSMC’s booth #1629 on Monday and Wednesday. Supporting new process nodes, half nodes and variants can be a challenge for any design team, but particularly an IP company offering a portfolio of different designs. To reduce the pain, TCI employs a range of techniques, from building robust circuits, to using proprietary extensions of CAD tools to creating designs and deliverables from one, universal database. In his presentation, John will explain the engineering behind a highly automated CAD flow that enables TCI to maximize IP consistency, quality and reuse.

John Maneatis and Brian Gardner, True Circuits' V.P. of Business Development, will also make presentations about True Circuits and our complete timing IP product portfolio in the ChipEstimate.com booth #2134 on Monday and Wednesday.

True Circuits will co-host two parties at DAC again this year, including the HOT Party on the 3rd Floor Mezzanine on Sunday night following the DAC Welcome Reception, and the Stars of IP Party at the Press Club on Tuesday night. Come join us and celebrate all that is good with IP!

When and Where

Moscone Convention Center, West Hall, San Francisco, CA

True Circuits Booth #1425
Monday - Wednesday, June 25-27, 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM

TSMC OIP Theater Booth #1629
Title: Automation Takes the Pain out of IP Porting
Presenter: John G. Maneatis, Ph.D.
Monday, June 25, 1:45 PM
Wednesday, June 27, 12:00 PM

ChipEstimate.com Booth #2134
Title: DDR 4/3 Memory Solution
Presenter: Brian Gardner
Monday, June 25, 1:00 PM

Title: 20 Years of Timing Excellence
Presenter: John G. Maneatis, Ph.D.
Wednesday, June 27, 2:00 PM

Contacts

For more information about True Circuits' PLLs and DLLs, please visit www.truecircuits.com.

For more information about the Design Automation Conference, please visit www.dac.com.

About True Circuits IoT PLLs

The IoT PLL is designed for very low power, sipping only 45uW at 30MHz and running from core power. It has a wide frequency range with multiplication factors up to 8192, allowing the PLL to run off of a small and inexpensive 32KHz crystal and still clock a 32-bit CPU at up to 250MHz. It is ideal for IoT applications like wearables and senor devices, where the power-performance profile must be managed tightly, and possibly over a very wide frequency range.

About True Circuits Ultra PLLs

The Ultra PLL employs a new state-of-the-art architecture and uses high-speed digital and analog circuits to achieve exceptional performance, with many useful features. It has ultra low jitter (<500fs) for the most demanding SerDes and ADC input clocks. It has ultra wide frequency range with multiplication factors from 3 to over 250,000, supporting reference clocks as low as 32KHz. It also has precise frequency control with a least 26 fractional bits (at least 10 precise) for extremely high fractional-N resolution. It can even generate precise and adjustable frequency spreading with programmable rate and depth to meet tight FCC requirements. The Ultra PLL packs all these features into a compact size that draws low power and, with full pin programmability, one PLL can be used for all applications on a SoC.

About True Circuits PLLs and DLLs

In addition to the IoT and Ultra PLLs, True Circuits offers a complete family of standardized and silicon-proven general purpose, clock generator, deskew, and spread spectrum PLLs and DDR DLLs that spans nearly all performance points and features typically requested by ASIC, FPGA and SoC designers. These high quality, low-jitter PLL and DLL hard macros are suited to a wide variety of interface standards and chip applications. They are pin-programmable, highly process tolerant and reusable. They are also easy to integrate and are fully supported, so customers can reduce both design and silicon risks.

True Circuits PLLs support a wide range of frequencies, multiplication factors and functions over which they deliver optimal performance, avoiding the cost and complexity of licensing multiple point-solution PLLs from foundries or other vendors. TCI's DLLs are available in mutli-slave and multi-phase versions and different sizes and form factors. They delay a set of signals by precise and adjustable fractions of a reference clock cycle independent of voltage and temperature and are ideal for high-speed DDR and ONFI interface applications. Customized PLL and DLL solutions are also available for specialized chip applications.

True Circuits PLLs and DLLs are available for immediate customer delivery in TSMC, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and UMC processes from 180nm to 7nm. For more information about True Circuits IP products, visit www.truecircuits.com/tci_technology.html and www.truecircuits.com/product_matrix.html.

About True Circuits DDR PHYs

The DDR 4/3 PHY is a high-performance, scalable system using a radically new architecture that continuously and automatically adjusts each pin individually, correcting skew within byte lanes. This state-of-the-art tuning acts independently on each pin, data phase and chip select value. Read data eye and gate timing are also continuously adjusted. Automatic training is included for multi-cycle read gate timing and write leveling, write data eye timing, and internal and external (on DRAM) Vref setting.

The PHY employs a localized and optimized PHY-to-memory controller interface to ease timing closure. The circuitry in each pin is able to measure the data eye and jitter, and calculate flight delays. The PHY also includes a full speed read/write BIST, which tests the complete read and write paths of every pin simultaneously with pseudo-random data.

Remarkable physical flexibility allows the PHY to adapt to each customer's die floorplan and package constraints, and is delivered and verified as a single unit for easy timing closure with no assembly required. The PHY is also DFI 4.0 compliant, and when combined with a suitable DDR 4/3 memory controller, a complete and fully-automatic DDR 4/3 system is realized.

The True Circuits DDR 4/3 PHY is initially available for customer delivery in TSMC's 28nm HPC/HPC+ process, with 16nm and 7nm versions to follow. Interested customers can obtain more product information on the web at www.truecircuits.com/ddr_phy.html or by contacting True Circuits at sales@truecircuits.com.

About True Circuits

True Circuits develops and markets a broad range of industry leading PLLs, DLLs and DDR PHY hard macros for ICs for the semiconductor, systems and electronics industries. TCI's robust state-of-the-art circuits, methodical and proven design strategy, and close association with the world's leading foundries, IDMs, and design services companies allow the company to quickly and reliably create new and innovative designs in a variety of advanced process technologies. For over 20 years, True Circuits has distinguished itself as the technology leader in the timing IP space, and its PLLs and DLLs are used extensively around the world in its customers' products with production volumes in the billions.

True Circuits is headquartered at 4300 El Camino Real, Suite 200, Los Altos, California 94022 and can be found on the web at www.truecircuits.com. Product inquiries can be made by calling the company directly at (650) 949-3400 or via e-mail at sales@truecircuits.com.