Renesas Technology Uses Magma Blast Fusion to Increase Speed and Enhance Capabilities of Next-Generation SoC Device for Car Navigation Systems

Advanced, Integrated Physical Design Capabilities Deliver 600 MHz Operating Speed and Performance Up to 1 GIPS


SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 31, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Magma(r) Design Automation Inc. (Nasdaq:LAVA), a provider of semiconductor design software, today announced that Renesas Technology used Blast Fusion(r), Blast Noise(r), Blast Rail(tm) and Blast Yield(tm) physical design software to implement a new system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution that offers significant performance and capability enhancements for car navigation systems and other in-vehicle car information system products. The single-chip SH7775 32-bit processor, running at speeds up to 600MHz, achieves performance as high as 1 GIPS (giga instructions per second) and up to 4.2 GFLOPS (giga floating-point operations per second). The SH7775 also offers over 50 percent better performance than previous generations. Magma's advanced, integrated physical design capabilities were critical to enabling Renesas Technology to deliver these improvements and meet the time-to-market requirements of this complex device.

"The ability to deliver complex, high-performance SoC solutions at a reasonable cost is what keeps Renesas on the leading edge," said Mr. Okada, director of the SoC Business Unit at Renesas Technology. "Magma software plays a key role in enabling us to shorten our development schedule even as we add more sophisticated capabilities to our products."

"The Renesas Technology SH7775 is truly an accomplishment and demonstrates the advantages of Blast Fusion's ability to concurrently address timing, area, signal integrity and power," said Kam Kittrell, general manager of Magma's Design Implementation Business Unit. "We are pleased to contribute to the success of one of the world's leading semiconductor system solutions providers."

About Magma's IC Implementation Flow

Blast Fusion, Blast Noise, Blast Rail and Blast Yield are key components of Magma's integrated netlist-to-GDSII design flow. Blast Fusion is a fast physical design system for advanced methodologies and nanometer process technologies. It provides advanced analysis and optimization capabilities for designing high-performance, low-power designs. Blast Fusion enables rapid design closure, taking into account new nanometer design challenges such as on-chip variation. Blast Noise is Magma's complete integrated signal integrity analysis and prevention solution. Blast Noise works concurrently with Blast Fusion throughout the implementation flow to automatically analyze and adjust a chip design to avoid crosstalk noise, crosstalk delay and signal electromigration (EM) problems. By automatically addressing these problems during physical design, Blast Noise eliminates the need for cumbersome post-layout analysis and repair, and ensures working silicon. Blast Rail provides power analysis, management and optimization capabilities, enabling continuous power, timing and area tradeoffs throughout the design flow. Blast Yield addresses design for manufacturability within the implementation flow eliminating costly iterations associated with post-layout DFM fixing.

About Magma

Magma's software for designing integrated circuits (ICs) is used to create complex, high-performance chips required in cellular telephones, electronic games, WiFi, MP3 players, DVD/digital video, networking, automotive electronics and other electronic applications. Magma's EDA software for IC implementation, analysis, physical verification, circuit simulation and characterization is recognized as embodying the best in semiconductor technology, enabling the world's top chip companies to "Design Ahead of the Curve"(tm) while reducing design time and costs. Magma is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., with offices around the world. Magma's stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol LAVA. Visit Magma Design Automation on the Web at www.magma-da.com.

Magma, Blast Fusion and Blast Noise are registered trademarks, and Blast Rail, Blast Yield and "Design Ahead of the Curve" are trademarks of Magma Design Automation. All other product and company names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Forward-Looking Statements:

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters set forth in this press release, including statements about the features and benefits of Magma's software are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially including, but not limited to Magma's ability to keep pace with rapidly changing technology and Magma's products abilities to produce desired results. Further discussion of these and other potential risk factors may be found in Magma's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (www.sec.gov). Magma undertakes no additional obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

LAVA-G



            

Contact Data