Source: Toshiba
July 28, 2008

Toshiba announces co-design/co-verification platform for collaborative development of chip, package and PCB system

New platform shortens SoC development times and delivers cost/performance-optimised solutions
Toshiba Electronics Europe (TEE) has announced a new system-on-chip (SoC) design and verification platform that will significantly shorten ASIC and ASSP development time. The CPS (Chip-Package-System) co-design/co-verification platform supports the rapid identification of the optimum SoC package as well as delivering the cost/performance benefits and improving verification accuracy prior to hardware prototyping.

Based on collaborative and simultaneous development of the chip, the package and the PCB system board, Toshiba’s CPS allows designers to take an overall system view and perform a number of traditionally sequential and isolated tasks in parallel. Specifically, CPS allows IC designers to create a detailed virtual package substrate while the chip development is still in progress and before the designing of the physical package substrate begins. From the package substrate model the designer can then extract an accurate SPICE model. By combining this SPICE model with the chip I/O model and a PCB model signal integrity and timing verification on the chip-package-system design can begin before the detailed chip design is completed.

The CPS platform includes Toshiba’s proprietary chip planner, a virtual package design tool chain that provides for signal integrity (SI), power integrity (PI), thermal integrity (TI), IR drop and ESD analysis. Using the planner, designers can automatically perform SI, PI and TI checks early in the design cycle as soon as pin assignment and design information becomes available. This helps to reduce final costs by ensuring an optimum pin count at an early stage of the development. Die pad allocations and feasibility of initial package specification can also be validated.

A seamless interface within Toshiba’s CSP suite of tools enables rapid validation and ensures a smooth migration from virtual to real package. Toshiba file formats are adapted to open EDA vendor formats, completely eliminating the need for manual work in the design chain.

The new platform is fully supported by the engineering teams at Toshiba’s European LSI Design and Engineering Centre (ELDEC) in Düsseldorf. Target applications will be those where high data rates and smaller process geometries require ever more complex and higher performance implementations. These include multi Gbps SerDes designs, DDR interfaces, precise analogue I/Os, PCI Express and SATA implementations, USB 2.0 high-speed PHYs and wide data path applications using 32-, 64- and 128- bit bus architectures.

For more information on Toshiba’s ASIC and Foundry business, please visit www.toshiba-components.com/ASIC.

About Toshiba

Toshiba Corporation is a leader in information and communications systems, electronic components, consumer products and power systems. The company’s integration of these wide-ranging capabilities assures its position as an innovator in advanced components, products and systems. Toshiba operates a global network of more than 740 companies, with 198,000 employees worldwide and annual sales surpassing US$76 billion.

Toshiba Electronics Europe (TEE) is the European Headquarters for the electronic components business of Toshiba Corporation, which is the world's fourth largest semiconductor vendor according to estimates by Dataquest.

Providing design, manufacturing, marketing and sales, TEE was formed in 1973 in Neuss, Germany. The company now has headquarters in Düsseldorf, Germany and subsidiaries in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Company president is Mr. Hitoshi Otsuka and the total number of personnel in Europe is around 400.

Toshiba Electronics Europe offers one of the industry's broadest IC and discrete product lines including high-end memory, microcontrollers, ASICs, ASSPs and display products for automotive, multimedia, consumer, telecoms and networking applications. The company also has a wide range of power semiconductor solutions.

For more company information visit Toshiba's web site at www.toshiba-components.com