Magma Introduces Flexible, Automated Floorplan Synthesis Product
Portable Design News, Thursday June 05, 2008
Magma Design Automation Inc. has announced Hydra, an automated floorplan synthesis and hierarchical design planning product with physical optimization capabilities that delivers superior predictability.
Unlike existing floorplanning and prototyping tools, Hydra takes timing, power, congestion and area into consideration and generates an implementation-ready floorplan, reducing turnaround time of very large designs. Hydra combines automated chip planning, automated partitioning and physical block shaping, top-level clock-tree generation and time budgeting for block-level implementation, dramatically improving designer productivity. Unlike traditional approaches that require manual macro placement, Hydra is the first product to offer a fully automated shape-aware and congestion-aware macro placer, enabling rapid and optimal placement of macros without time-consuming manual interventions.
According to Sanjay Bali, Magma Product Director, Hydra can be used in third-party flows or integrated with Magma’s Talus IC implementation system. Used in conjunction with Talus Design or Talus Vortex, Hydra offers seamless integration from prototyping to implementation within the same data model. Hydra is seamlessly integrated with RioMagic, Magma’s package-aware chip planning solution, enabling early I/O planning and placement tradeoffs for both peripheral and flip-chip packages and full-chip DRC-clean 45-degree redistribution layer (RDL) routing.
Designers can manage the complexity of multimillion-gate designs and reliably achieve timing closure thanks to a number of Hydra capabilities:
- Full hierarchical methodology supports bottom-up block-based flows, top-down black-box flows and mixed bottom-up/top-down flows with automated floorplanning, partitioning and time budgeting.
- Early design planning is possible using a netlist consisting of a mix of gates, RTL, macros, black-box models and GlassBox models. Provides quick design prototype feedback for floorplan, design and timing constraint refinement.
- Automated hierarchy management, physical partitioning, macro placement and soft block shaping not only save considerable runtime and manual effort, but also provide better timing, area and quality of results.
- Relative Floorplanning Constraints eliminate manual intervention when changes need to be made in logical hierarchy or size and shape of physical partitions.
- Leverages the same placement, timing, routing and analysis engines as the Talus IC implementation platform, ensuring a highly predictable flow.
- Based on Magma’s unified data model, Hydra enhances productivity, provides ease of use by eliminating unnecessary, error-inducing and time-consuming file transfers.
Hydra is available as a standalone product, or integrated within the Magma flow.
Magma Design Automation, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (408) 565-7500 [www.magma-da.com]
