ARM Bangalore center gets VLSI test lab

BANGALORE, INDIA: ARM Holdings, the world's leading semiconductor intellectual property (IP) supplier has announced launch of its Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) test lab set up at a cost of $1 million at its Bangalore design center.

The VLSI test lab at Bangalore is the first such facility to set up outside UK by of ARM Holdings. The test lab will now enable ARM Indian design center to provide a full complement of design services to the company's global partners, Warren East, CEO, ARM told newspersons on Thursday.

The lab will provide analysis of VLSI libraries and ARM physical IP to correlate design to silicon behavior, an activity that has increasingly become a partner requirement prior to System-on-a-chip (SoC) tapeout as technologies have increased in complexity and mask costs have escalated.

The test chips developed by ARM will be going though a final validation at the new VLSI test lab. This will enable ARM partners utilizing the production-ready IP libraries to significantly reduce their time-to-market cycle and increase the probability of first-pass success of their SoCs.

"The choice of India and particularly Bangalore as the location of second VLSI test lab for ARM is yet another example of Indian's significance in our global operations. The facility will be further expanded by the third quarter of current fiscal," the ARM CEO said.

“The choice of India and particularly Bangalore as the location of second VLSI test lab for ARM is yet another example of Indian’s significance in our global operations.  The facility will be further expanded by the third quarter of current fiscal,” the ARM CEO said.