On June 13-14th, 2018, Dolphin Integration, partner of the ENIAC’s THINGS2DO European project, showcased its achievements with PowerStudio™, its cutting-edge EDA tool for safe Power Regulation Networks implementation.
The THINGS2DO Pilot Line (2014-2018) aimed at building a FD-SOI-based European ecosystem fostering innovations for a successful introduction of products onto the market. The project funded and supported the development of major FD SOI-based IPs and ASICs as well as EDA tools. It also proved that FD-SOI substrates perfectly fit IoT and automotive new applications thanks to its low-power consumption capabilities. For instance, it allows to dynamically take control on threshold voltage and compensate for temperature variations, driving speed improvement by 200% for ultra-low voltage applications.
“Being involved in the THINGS2DO project was an opportunity for Dolphin Integration to start introducing FD-SOI in its automatic design methodologies,” said Frederic Poullet, Dolphin Integration’s CTO. “Dolphin Integration plans to offer a full suite of tools allowing its customers to implement right-on-first-pass Power Regulation Networks.”
Dolphin Integration provides energy efficient IPs and ASIC services dedicated to the low-power application market and supports its internal teams with tailor-made software tools. Willing to go further, and to address the specific needs of its customers in low-power design, Dolphin Integration develops PowerStudio™, a global solution for the optimization of Power Regulation Networks (PRNet) to be used at an early stage of the SoC design process. Indeed, PRNet integration paves the way for new design challenges, which need to be handled:
- Noise: Noise propagation issues with high-sensitive analog and digital components, especially in advanced technology nodes.
PowerStudio™, thanks to two powerful mode-related simulations, checks whether the noise tolerance of each sensitive component of a SoC is properly respected within the various SoC usage conditions. - Power supply integrity: Analysis issues to verify whether the defined supply has accurately propagated throughout the PRNet.
PowerStudio™ streamlines the Mode Transition Check effects over the PRNet by simulating the power supply integrity of each component of a SoC during mode transitions. However,the Noise Propagation Check verifies whether the power supply noise profile of a sensitive load (e.g. audio CODEC) remains below its tolerance template in a steady mode.
The first module of PowerStudio™ will also embed architecture optimization features at the schematic level, in terms of FoM-based cost optimization, mode management, margin cuts and integrability rate-based risk optimization.
