InTime Software, Inc. (InTime), a new EDA company, announced its first product, DesignWarrior, an Integrated RTL Development Environment coupled with Automated Implementation Flows, that improves chip performance by guiding design teams to develop better Register-Transfer Level (RTL) designs.
DesignWarrior shaves weeks from RTL design cycles. Its virtual prototyping capabilities are used to inject WireAwareness into the RTL code. Its technology makes performance prediction possible before a single line of RTL is developed and continues refining the prediction until the RTL code is completed. This prediction is possible because the design specification, as it evolves, is automatically mapped directly to a silicon technology, alleviating the requirement for logic designers to be physical design experts in order to successfully tape-out.
Automated Implementation Flows drive simulation, synthesis and place and route tools such as those from Cadence Design Systems (NYSE: CDN) and Synopsys (Nasdaq: SNPS). DesignWarrior is aware of the different views (logical, synthesis, and physical) of a design enabling it determine the points in the hierarchy from where the design should be simulated, synthesized or placed and routed. It automatically sets up the parameters, rules, and constraints, based on the estimations derived during the virtual prototyping phase, to drive these processes. It develops timing budgets for the blocks in the design and drives the implementation flow, all transparently to the designer.
DesignWarrior is for system companies, IDMs and semiconductor vendors involved in the design of complex ASICs, ASSPs and SOCs. These companies have tremendous time to market pressures as well as above average performance and complexity requirements. DesignWarrior includes InSight, the designer's desktop, a Technology Wizard and a Project Wizard.
InSight provides designers with RTL design entry capability, virtual prototyping, auto-piloted implementation flows and fully automated RTL design planning. Inputs to DesignWarrior are design specifications, partial or complete RTL and constraints in industry standard formats such as SDC. The Project Wizard is used to describe the team make up, the design goals, such as area, speed and performance and evaluate the target technology against the design specifications. The Technology Wizard automatically creates design kits using industry standard formats such as LEF, DEF, .lib and STAMP.
At any stage during the design's development, DesignWarrior predicts the performance of the design using its virtual prototyping, or automated design planning engine. This prediction process is ongoing as the design progresses through implementation.
DesignWarrior provides for automated design team collaboration. During the design process, designers need to update the rest of the team with their changes and then update their local designs with the global changes. This communication occurs automatically whenever a change needs to be propagated.
DesignWarrior automatically gathers data from the project definition, other parts of the design and other designers. With this information designers can chat about, negotiate, tag and resolve issues related to the team's design.
DesignWarrior is available in March. It runs on Sun workstations and supports Verilog. Pricing begins at $85,000 (USD).
About InTime:
InTime was founded in 1999 with the goal of developing EDA design and design planning technologies that help close the electronic design performance and design productivity gaps.