MONROVIA, California – April 20, 2010 – Tanner EDA, the catalyst for innovation for the design, layout and verification of analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits (ICs), has released version 15 of the company’s HiPer Silicon full-flow design suite, giving designers a complete analog design flow from schematic capture, circuit simulation, and waveform probing to physical layout and verification. HiPer Silicon v15 contains new features and functionality, including:

• A complete redesign of the waveform editor product (W-Edit), which provides designers with a signal analysis platform rather than simple layout views.
• The addition of a new database for storage and management of simulation data.
• HiPer DevGen, the newest addition to Tanner’s tool portfolio that offers breakthrough device and structure generation for layout productivity.

Tanner’s v15 W-Edit provides a new paradigm for post-simulation analytics, allowing designers to perform a robust set of analyses in an intuitive and cohesive user environment.  As tool user Michael Lehrman of MESA Imaging AG said, “I’ve been using Tanner tools for a few years now, and I find the new W-Edit to be everything I need in a waveform analysis platform. There are no extraneous features, just the right mixture of features that most A/MS designers need.”

The new HiPer DevGen tool, developed in collaboration with IC Mask Design, is offered as an add-on option that focuses on silicon quality and yield to generate production-ready devices. By accelerating the most time-consuming aspects of the layout process, this new tool substantially reduces the amount of time required for analog layout while improving quality and design consistency. Integrated device/structure logic ensures a consistent and high quality approach to the layout of complex analog structures across design engineers, design teams, and engineering sites.

HiPer DevGen generates key analog design primitives such as current mirrors and differential pairs, often the most time-consuming aspect of layout and the most critical to the functionality of silicon. It allows effortless creation of T-cells for CMOS technologies, applies matching techniques to address common processing artifacts, produces the optimal solution for parasitics and silicon area, and creates devices optimized for high yield.

 “Our goal was to create a robust tool that could produce a layout of high quality while simultaneously reducing the cycle time,” said IC Mask Founder & CTO Ciaran Whyte. “Beta customers have told us unanimously that HiPer DevGen exceeds their expectations on both dimensions.”

“Tanner EDA has long been helping innovative companies create breakthrough applications in analog and mixed-signal design,” offered Massimo Sivilotti, chief scientist at Tanner Research. “Founder John Tanner always thought it was important that designers in any size company should be able to have access to software solutions that would make their jobs easier and more productive. HiPer Silicon v15 continues our commitment to that strategy.”

Pricing and Availability

HiPer Silicon v15 and the HiPer DevGen add-on are available now for the Windows operating system; Linux versions will be available later in Q210.  For additional information, contact Tanner EDA Sales by phone 626-471-9700, or email sales@tannereda.com. 

About Tanner EDA

Tanner EDA provides a complete line of software solutions that catalyze innovation for the design, layout and verification of analog and mixed-signal (A/MS) integrated circuits (ICs). Customers are creating breakthrough applications in areas such as power management, displays and imaging, automotive, consumer electronics, life sciences, and RF devices. A low learning curve, high interoperability, and a powerful user interface improve design team productivity and enable a low total cost of ownership (TCO). Capability and performance are matched by low support requirements and high support capability as well as an ecosystem of partners that bring advanced capabilities to A/MS designs.

Founded in 1988, Tanner EDA solutions deliver just the right mixture of features, functionality and usability. The company has shipped over 33,000 licenses of its software to more than 5,000 customers in 67 countries.

Starnberg (Germany) April 20, 2010 – The second MOST Forum took place on March 23rd, 2010, in Frankfurt, Germany. 150 professionals from the automotive electronics industry and academia participated in the very informative conference and visited the accompanying exhibition. The broad international audience was composed of attendees from Europe as well as India, Japan, South Korea, and the United States. “Besides the OEM’s perspective and discussion of the ongoing MOST150 development and production launch, the message of the MOST Forum concentrated on two aspects: flexible means of connectivity to the MOST network and the readiness of MOST150 for new applications beyond pure infotainment,” said Dr. Christian Thiel, MOST Cooperation Administrator. “The conference marks the kickoff for the MOST future in proving the technology’s compliance to new connectivity interfaces and functionalities.” Response was positive overall: the attendees very much appreciated the high quality of the conference. They were enthusiastic about the informative and interesting presentations and looked forward to future MOST events. 

Universal Plug-n-Play to Connect Consumer World to MOST

For fast and flexible connectivity of consumer devices to the in-car MOST network, it was discussed how Universal Plug-n-Play (UPnP) can be leveraged in a MOST based infotainment system. UPnP describes a standard of the home entertainment and consumer electronics world, providing standard interfaces for many entertainment functions. Due to its capability to transport Ethernet frames and IP based services transparently, UPnP can seamlessly migrate into car infotainment applications as well. The embedded car world and the consumer world can be blended seamlessly. Furthermore, UPnP was proposed for a MOST/IP gateway, describing the signaling to establish audio streaming between a consumer device and the vehicle’s infotainment system.

MOST150 Is Ready for Driver Assist Applications

The latest research results have been presented at the MOST Forum, proving that MOST150 is prepared to support safety-critical applications and is a viable candidate as the future network for driver assistance systems. Driver assistance functions are starting to complete and extend the feature set of traditional infotainment systems, and the number of vehicles with driver assistance features like camera systems, distance controls, or lane departure warnings will increase rapidly. The new requirements demand a network update, since a suitable network will have to be both high speed and high safety. None of today’s existing vehicle networks entirely fulfills these requirements. However, from all available candidates, the MOST network is the one that already today comes very close to the new requirements.

In the well attended exhibition area, various companies presented their innovative MOST solutions and applications. Amongst the exhibitors was the MOST Cooperation with a demonstrator showing that MOST supports star, daisy-chain, tree and other topologies as well as different physical layers. The carmakers Audi and BMW demonstrated the latest car models that just had been introduced to the market. Further exhibits were by Avago Technologies, Dension Audio Systems, GADV, Göpel electronic, Hamamatsu Photonics, ICT Software Engineering, K2L, Melexis, Ontorix, Ruetz System Solutions, SMSC, TOYODA GOSEI, and Vector Informatik. Industry partners SAE International (Society of Automotive Engineering, www.sae.org) and ZVEI (Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association, www.zvei.org) as well as the media partners Auto Electronics (www.autoelectronics.com), Elektronik automotive (www.elektroniknet.de), and ElektronikPraxis (www.elektronikpraxis.de) supported the MOST Forum and displayed their latest publications and work.

About the MOST Forum

The MOST Forum is an International conference and exhibition on infotainment technology using MOST (Media Oriented Systems Transport). MOST is a multimedia networking technology optimized for use in cars and other applications. It enables the transport of high Quality of Service audio and video together with packet data and real-time control over a single transmission medium. The MOST Cooperation is the knowledge partner of the MOST Forum. It is the organization through which MOST Technology is standardized and refined so that it continues to stay abreast of the latest industry requirements. Today it consists of 16 international carmakers and more than 60 key component suppliers. They have joined together to work with the MOST Technology and to contribute to its innovation. Further information on the MOST Cooperation is available at http://www.mostcooperation.com. The MOST Forum is organized by qaqadu event gmbh. For more information please see http://www.mostforum.com.