Freescale’s Subsidiary Uses Cadence Low-Power Solution To Develop Advanced Power Management Chip

Freescale Semiconductor Japan Ltd., a subsidiary of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (Freescale), has used the Cadence Low-Power Solution, developed by Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (Cadence). Freescale is using this solution to design, verify, and tape out a multi-channel power management IC for portable digital audio/video products such as digital still cameras. With Cadence’s solution, Freescale achieves a significant power savings for the device and a 20% reduction in design time.

In today’s advanced portable product market, power consumption is both a priority and a challenge, said Kimio Ueda, Ph.D., General Manager of Sendai Design Research and Development Center at Freescale Semiconductor Japan. Usually, that would translate into longer design times. The highly integrated Cadence Low-Power Solution helps us to quickly and effectively create more power-efficient designs, which provide huge benefits to our customers.

The complex power management device is built on Freescale’s mixed-signal SMARTMOS™ technology and is capable of managing multiple power modes. Freescale used the CPF-enabled Cadence Low-Power Solution as a comprehensive design flow to design the multiple supply voltages and power shutoff capabilities in the chip, resulting in a small, fast and cool device.

The Incisive Enterprise Simulator in the integrated design flow allowed Freescale to achieve fast verification of the power domains for quick, accurate design. Cadence Encounter RTL Compiler and Encounter Digital Implementation System provided automated power domain handling capabilities for reduced power consumption using the MSV and PSO techniques.

The CPF-enabled Cadence Low-Power Solution has been demonstrated yet again to be a mature and production-ready low-power solution, said Steve Carlson, vice president of Low-Power Solutions at Cadence. The power management IC tapeout experience at Freescale Semiconductor clearly illustrates that the Low-Power Solution delivers the capability to quickly create small and fast designs that consume a small amount of power.