Matrox acquires Encounter RTL Compiler from Cadence

[UtwigMU]

Link

"Cadence understands the significance of VHDL as a widely-used language. Having access to Encounter RTL Compiler synthesis with VHDL allows our engineers to utilize world-class technology to increase our quality of silicon while improving our design time," said Dave Chiappini, ASIC project director for Matrox, a leading supplier of leading-edge graphics chips. "Graphics chips are typically large and complex. In our current evaluation of Encounter RTL Compiler, we were able to achieve up to 30 percent area savings on some designs, within four days of installing the tool."

So with this and nanoroute, we can expect [M] reving up the core clocks and designing smaller dies that are cheaper to produce.

[XHotKolaX]

I'm wary of the "up to 30% remark. Like Intel's HT gives up to 25% boost in performance

[UtwigMU]

It basically just means that a core that was 10x10mm and occupied 100mm2 now theoretically occupies only 8.36x8.36mm.

Since the "up to" phrase was used, this means that they were able to shrink only certain parts of core by 30%.

This should mainly translate in more cores per waffer and cheaper production costs.


The percentage of core shrink translates to percentage of cores per waffer increase.

[Marshmallowman]

Me thinks Haigs hints about something new will be a parhelia rerouted and tweaked with the new tools and maybe .09.

.09 and smaller size due to tweaking should mean it is cheaper and faster without much human effort. my 2 cents worth.

[a_h]

They're buying these tools *now* - some time to get them really working is always needed, isn't it? It isn't like that that you get the tools and after a half year a new product is ready? Rather after 1.5 years?

If they've got something in the works, it is developed with their conventional tools, imo.

Just my 2 pesos, Hannes

[spadnos]

Originally posted by a_h
They're buying these tools *now* - some time to get them really working is always needed, isn't it? It isn't like that that you get the tools and after a half year a new product is ready? Rather after 1.5 years?

If they've got something in the works, it is developed with their conventional tools, imo.

Just my 2 pesos, Hannes

I don't think it's that bad. It's more like switching to a more efficient C compiler - you need to tweak some switches, maybe add or remove some parentheses, and you get a faster program from it.

Of course, you still have the validation process, which does take some time.

- Steve

[UtwigMU]

Also they got the nanoroute in the middle of last year and they did not neccesserally install this yesterday.