Chip majors unite to overcome low-power barriers

BANGALORE: Cadence Design Systems today announced the formation of Power Forward Initiative to address obstacles to lower power IC design facing the electronics industry.

Members of the Initiative include AMD, ARM, ATI Technologies Inc., Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Freescale Semiconductor, Fujitsu Limited, NEC Electronics Corp., and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

According to Cadence, this Initiative will draw on the expertise of leading technology companies, with the goal of enabling the design and production of more power-efficient electronic devices.

The Power Forward Initiative will link design, verification and implementation to reduce risk and increase predictability in chip power reduction. Members will work to adopt a new automated design infrastructure aimed at reducing chip power consumption.

To achieve its goal, the Power Forward Initiative charter calls for, among other things, the refinement and promotion of a new open specification that captures essential design intent for power and links the design, implementation and verification domains. The group aims to begin the industry open standardization process starting in 2007.

Mike Fister, president and CEO of Cadence, said, “By uniting industry leaders, the Power Forward Initiative will steer the industry toward a broader, more systematic, and much more integrated approach to low-power design, providing a platform to enable higher-level exploration while leveraging the good building-block work we've all already done.”

Marty Seyer, senior vice president, AMD, Commercial Sector, said, “Increasing performance levels at the expense of increasing power consumption is unacceptable in current and future processors. We look forward to working through the Power Forward Initiative to deploy new design automation approaches that reduce power effects on semiconductor device performance.”

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