TowerJazz and Tanner EDA to deliver PDK for power management IC design

Israel based semiconductor fab service provider TowerJazz and chip design software vendor Tanner EDA have announced a joint initiative to develop Process Design Kits (PDKs) for analog/mixed-signal IC designers using Tanner EDA's HiPer SiliconT software. As per collaboration, Tanner EDA tools users will get access TowerJazz's 0.18- and 0.35-micron power management process platform and TowerJazz customers access to Tanner EDA's analog/mixed-signal IC design software tools for a complete IC design solution.

"Tanner EDA offers a perfect blend of price-performance, flexibility and interoperability that addresses the needs of our analog/mixed-signal IC design customers," stated Ori Galzur, VP, VLSI Design Center for TowerJazz.

"By working with EDA vendors such as Tanner EDA, we can provide our mutual customers with an advanced power management platform and customized design capabilities to achieve more predictable designs. This will enable them to decrease design cycle time and achieve a time-to-market advantage for their high performance and differentiated power management solutions. " He added.

"Our collaboration with TowerJazz is another example of enabling innovation by bringing leading-edge foundry capability to our customers," commented Tanner EDA President, Greg Lebsack. "We are excited to continue to expand our relationship with TowerJazz to benefit our mutual customers. Our specialized IC design software combined with TowerJazz's power platform will quickly and effectively meet our analog/mixed signal customers' needs for high quality power management ICs."

The semiconductor fab and the EDA tools are intricately related and the relation is getting even closer at nanometer scales. Both having challenging times in moving to finer nodes because of exponential growth of complexities as the node pitch reduce.

Tower is performing above industry average, it's preference for Tanner EDA tells; both have some specialized and application specific processes and tools for designing power management devices.

Availability of PDKs: By Q1 2010