As 2019 moves into full swing, I find myself looking forward to what we hope to achieve at Thalia in the coming year, and at the same time reflecting with great pride on how far we progressed in 2018.
We started 2018 on a high, having been able to publicly disclose that Catena is using our unique combination of analog design automation and expertise to make a fundamental shift in its approach to the creation and delivery of analog IP.
A few short months later we were able to confirm the first tape-outs of projects under that agreement – including migration of a WiFi RF solution to Global Foundries’ 28nm process; migration of Bluetooth IP between TSMC and Global Foundries processes; and a second low power Bluetooth IP migration between 28nm and 40nm nodes.
According to Kave Kianush, Catena Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, these projects provided “strong validation of Catena’s new, more agile approach to analog IP creation and reuse”. Kave also praised Thalia as “instrumental in delivering these projects on-time, to-budget and, just as importantly, to-specification”.
After a successful rebrand and website relaunch in the spring, we were also able to get our message heard at a number of industry events, including Cadence CDNLive EMEA; TSMC Technology Symposium events in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Herzliya, Israel; and IP-SoC 2018 in Grenoble, France.
Demonstrating analog migration
At CDNLive it was particularly gratifying to be able to demonstrate our AMALIA analog migration flow for the first time at a public event. My presentation at the conference – “Analog IP Reuse & Process Migration: Challenges & an Innovative Methodology to Address Them” – illustrated the changes we see in analog design. I believe that human expertise is indispensible, but that some aspects of the analog flow can be sped up and improved using design automation. Migration is a great example – traditionally, a process change has meant a redesign: but as our work with Catena illustrates, there’s plenty we can do in terms of tools and methodologies that support the designer and make the process more efficient.
Analog design reuse – a new approach
TSMC’s Symposium always offers a great opportunity to gauge the pulse of the industry, and this year’s events were no exception. Our CEO Rodger Sykes and Sales Director Jean-Francois Lambert were able to introduce many potential customers to our analog design offering – not only in schematic porting and process migration, but also explaining our ability to facilitate the generation of design variants, and increase performance of existing analog IPs.
Focusing on schematic porting
At the IP-SoC event we were more focused on schematic porting, and once again my presentation was greeted with a lot of interest. We’ve already published a case study on this aspect of the flow, and I was able to provide some detailed facts and figures on the RoI of our new approach to analog design.
Moving into 2019
I’m expecting 2019 to be another exciting year – we’ll have more news on our products and technology developments, expansion in the team, and more significant corporate announcements expected soon.
Thanks for your support and interest in Thalia in 2018, and here’s to a successful coming year!
