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Winston-Salem, NC, USA – August 15, 2005 – Triad Semiconductor Inc., the leader in mixed signal structured ASIC solutions has made it possible for designers to reuse analog intellectual property (IP) from one design to the next enabling a radical reduction in both development time and cost for mixed signal integrated circuits (ICs).

Winston-Salem, NC (PRWEB) August 17, 2005 -- Triad Semiconductor Inc., the leader in mixed signal structured ASIC solutions has made it possible for designers to reuse analog intellectual property (IP) from one design to the next enabling a radical reduction in both development time and cost for mixed signal integrated circuits (ICs).

The traditional mixed signal semiconductor design approach has required that analog circuits be tediously designed one transistor at a time by hand using expensive full-custom layout tools. Using these tools designers manually draw transistors one polygon at a time. This process consumes a significant amount of engineering time and money. Furthermore, once the design is complete it is “fixed in silicon” and very difficult to reuse in the next design due to the design’s rigid size, aspect ratio, and process constraints. Because of these restrictions designers rarely reuse working IP and are often forced to start from scratch on each design. This outdated approach results in an inefficiency that is becoming unexeptable in todays competitive global economy where time to market and design cost reduction pressures are making this hand-crafted approach to analog design simply too expensive.

Triad’s Mixed Signal Structured ASIC (MSSA) technology allows analog IP and mixed-signal IP to be easily reused from one design to the next by eliminating the need for full-custom layout and the hand drawing of analog integrated circuits. Triad’s MSSA solution predifines analog and digital circuitry plus chip-wide routing in 19 of the 20 silicon layers of the semiconductor die. The designer then interconnects these functions (OpAmps, resistors, analog switches, capacitors, etc.) by drawing high-level schematics. Triad software next maps the designer’s circuits to resources on the MSSA platform and the software interconnects these resources using vias placed between the routing fabric made up of metal2 and metal3. This new approach to analog IC design means that analog IP can now exist in netlist form instead of hand-drawn polygons. These netlists representing IP blocks can then be read by Triad software and automatically routed on the next design.

“Having analog IP blocks available can easily cut IC design from 12 to 18 months down to 1 to 3 months” said Jim Kemerling, Triad’s CTO.

Triad’s first IP block to be made available at no charge is the PGIA, a programmable gain instrumentation amplifier. In the near future, Triad will release an ever increasing analog IP library including: analog to digital converters (ADC), digital to analog converters(DAC), switched capacitor interfaces, analog muxes, and complete data acquisition systems ready for customer use and modification. Additionally, Triad Alliance Members can release there designs as reusable IP to other designers creating products on MSSA technology.

“Now, even a single designer in the USA, Europe, or China can start their own IP company and create reusable analog IP that has a market through the Triad Alliance IP Exchange Program” said Reid Wender, Triad’s Alliance Manager.

About Triad Semiconductor, Inc.
Triad Semiconductor, Inc. is a privately held fabless semiconductor company with headquarters in the Piedmont Triad Research Park in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. For more information, please contact Reid Wender, Triad Alliance Manager, via email, e-mail protected from spam bots, or call (336) 721-9450.

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Source :  http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/8/prweb273104.htm