Author: PR

Cologne, Germany, 17 August 2022 – Thalia, provider of analog and mixed-signal circuit IP reuse platform, today announced its expansion into the Israel market and the appointment of Motty Houli, from TechLink Global Ltd., to represent Thalia and its AMALIA IP reuse platform in the country.  

Since Intel established a key design centre in Israel in the 1970s, the country has been renowned as having one of the semiconductor industry’s most active start-up sectors. A Semico Research report in 2020 showed that Israel was second only to the US in terms of semiconductor start-up activity. The country now has over 150 native fabless semiconductor design companies, plus dozens of the world’s leading semiconductor companies operating strategically important design centres. 

Motty Houli brings more than 25 years of local market expertise and contacts throughout the industry, both at the semiconductor and system level. Having started his career as a chip designer, Motty Houli is well positioned to understand the needs of Thalia’s customers and the potential for Thalia’s IP reuse platform. 

Thalia’s AMALIA IP reuse platform is employed by companies around the world to maximise their investments in development efforts, as well as ensuring companies have a cost and time-efficient solution to migrate their existing product lines onto new wafer fabs and process nodes. AMALIA has delivered over 40 analog and mixed signal Ips, many in silicon and in commercial use, ranging in applications from, Wifi, BLE IP, image sensors, ADCs, PLL and Power Management IPs. 

The benefits of Thalia’s AMALIA platform are increasingly important to designers during the current period of tight capacity in the semiconductor industry. 

Sowmyan Rajagopalan, Thalia CEO, commented, “Israel is a market that’s been of interest for a long time. A lot of companies we engage with have design operations and decision makers in the country. We are pleased to have Motty as a sales rep in the region. The crunch in the semiconductor capacity is highlighting the importance of strategic, planned analog IP reuse as part of a company’s roadmap. This is driving our need to expand globally to serve this growing and increasingly urgent requirement.” 

30 May, Cologne, Germany – Thalia Design Automation Ltd., provider of analog and mixed-signal circuit IP reuse platform, today announced its core Design Enabler product has been enhanced to significantly boost the value it brings to product development teams in both optimizing the performance of migrated designs and improving or preserving layout.

An improved set of Machine Learning (ML) algorithms in Thalia Design Enabler now presents the designer with the best solution by balancing circuit and layout requirements. The ML algorithms go further in factoring in the impact of layout changes, and further simplify an effective migration by preserving, improving and validating the topology and the floorplan.

Design Enabler is part of the powerful AMALIA IP Reuse Platform that enables cost-effective re-use of analog and mixed signal integrated circuits. The technology agnostic Design Enabler software enables users to efficiently centre designs after migration from one technology to another.

By quickly identifying the minimum set of devices needed to adjust the design the tool reduces the number of changes required in layout while improving performance. With the use AI and machine learning this software can make significant savings of up to 50% time and resources.

The new enhancements to Design Enabler’s algorithms improve time to market advantages and cost savings by balancing improved performance of the design with essential layout requirements to present the designer with multiple solutions.

A Thalia customer case study provides an example of a 45% reduction in design time using the existing Design Enabler:

Thalia has now deployed Machine Learning (ML) across all of its AMALIA platform to analyze waveforms and to propose the ideal solution for the designer, based on differential analyses.

Christopher Yates, VP Software Engineering at Thalia, commented, “Customers using Design Enabler tell us they’re saving at least half of their original re-design time, and with the enhancements we’re announcing today, we expect our customers to see immediate benefits both in optimizing the performance of their design and quickly and easily being able to balance this against the best layout to suite their design.”

Cologne, Germany – 26 January 2022 – Thalia Design Automation, provider of analog and mixed-signal circuit IP reuse platform, today announced enhancements to its Technology Analyzer and Circuit Porting tools, key parts of its AMALIA IP reuse & development platform. The new features support designers with a broader set of process technologies, plus intelligent machine learning features to significantly accelerate analysis and porting, to further cut costs and improve design productivity.

Thalia now utilizes machine learning across its AMALIA platform to analyze waveforms and propose candidate solutions for designers, based on differential analyses.

Updates to Technology Analyzer and Circuit Porting enable Thalia’s clients to migrate to an even broader range of process technologies, from 350nm down to 22nm including FDSOI. These updates make the AMALIA platform applicable to a deeper range of applications, including: IoT devices, MCUs, 5G infrastructure, Radar, and RF.

In addition, Thalia has enhanced its Technology Analyzer software to extract the noise, DC, AC characteristics over corners and Monte Carlo analysis.

As part of the full AMALIA platform, Thalia’s Technology Analyzer helps IP houses and integrated circuit design companies determine if their IP is suitable for cost-effective reuse and also assist with the selection of the optimal process technology for the required application. The software generates a list of electrically comparable devices between the source and target technology i.e. Mapped devices. Thalia’s Circuit Porting software facilitates the reuse of existing circuits from the source technology to the target technology, by quickly and efficiently migrating schematics, maintaining the floorplan and electrical values. The software uses electrically comparable mapped devices generated by the Technology Analyzer, during the migration process. This ensures the design after migration to be comparable to the starting design and thereby significantly reduces the iterations during circuit verification.

Thalia CEO Sowmyan Rajagopalan commented, “Our customers have experienced the benefits of Technology Analyzer and Circuit Porting and the value they bring to design efficiencies and profitability. It’s no surprise then that these customers are keen for us to extend the capabilities of these powerful tools to support more processes. Meanwhile, the Thalia EDA development team has also evolved the platform’s functionality and user experience: with ML and enhanced GUIs – these value-added features help to ensure Thalia customers experience the very best in design automation.

“Particularly now, when capacity at wafer fabs is tight, it’s important that designers remain agile to access chip manufacturing where it’s available, and where it is cost effective.” Rajagopalan continued, “The enhancements to Technology Analyzer and Circuit Porting extend our leadership in Analog IP reuse tools enabling automated analysis of the process, options and likely outcomes of moving to new processes or fabs.”

For more information about Thalia and the AMALIA Platform, visit https://www.thalia-da.com/

Cologne, Germany, 4th October 2021 – Following recent announcements on the further development of its AMALIA platform and its application to an expanding range of use cases, Thalia Design Automation, provider of analog and mixed-signal circuit IP reuse platform, today announced the appointment of a new CEO, alongside an extension of its Executive Board.

Founder and former Chief Technology Officer Sowmyan Rajagopalan takes the role of CEO with immediate effect.

The Thalia Board, led by executive chairman Rodger Sykes, has been expanded and an Advisory Board appointed to support and accelerate business growth. Advisory Board members include;

• Kavé Kianush, who has nearly three decades of experience in the industry, working with Philips Research Labs and Philips Semiconductors System Labs, and later as CTO and Vice President of Catena, an IC design-house based in the Netherlands.

• Guillaume d’Eyssautier, who has a career spanning the past 40 years in the semiconductor industry, including management positions in both Europe and the USA. Guillaume is on the board of several start-up companies in the micro-electronics and software domain, and most recently was CEO of DelfMEMS.

Sowmyan Rajagopalan, who founded Thalia in 2011, said that both the re-structure and the addition of an Advisory Board reflect Thalia’s continuing commitment to growth and its determination to further explore new channels and markets for its innovative IP reuse platform.

He commented: “I’m delighted to take on the role of CEO at what is already proving to be an exciting development phase for the business. Across the industry, Thalia is coming to be recognized as truly innovative and disruptive player in the IP reuse market. With the support of a strengthened Board, and our new Advisory Board, we’ve brought further depth and a great deal of fresh experience to the inform commercial strategy and accelerate growth.”

Executive Chairman Rodger Sykes comment: “These structural changes to the business are an indication of its ambition and growing presence in the marketplace. The past several years has been about technical innovation and working hard to meet and exceed the requirements of a growing client list. In the process, we’ve developed an outstanding technology platform and a world-class team of engineers. I am delighted that Sowmyan has agreed to bring his vision, drive and expertise to the role of CEO. I would also like to welcome our new Board members and look forward to working with them to forge the next phase of Thalia’s development.”

CEO Sowmyan Rajagopalan has nearly two decades of experience in the design and development of analog IP, IP strategy, analog EDA solutions and design methodologies. He has been awarded multiple patents in EDA, design and applications. He is responsible for business strategy and leads the company’s development of disruptive EDA solutions, algorithms and methodologies targeting analog migration, design variants and “IP on-demand”.

Thalia’s AMALIA IP re-use platform revolutionizes the reuse of analog and mixed signal integrated circuits – migrating, refining and optimizing existing IP for new applications and technologies. This enables IP houses and IC design companies to re-use and diversify product ranges quickly and cost effectively to meet evolving market demand and reach new markets.

Ends

Partnership enhances market-leading Technology Analyzer with robust hardened I/Os and ESD protection options

Cologne, Germany, 16 June 2021 – Thalia Design Automation Ltd., provider of analog and mixed-signal circuit IP reuse platform, today announced a new partnership with Sofics, a leading provider of analog I/Os, specialty digital I/Os and ESD protection.

Thalia’s Technology Analyzer, part of its AMALIA platform, helps major IP houses and integrated circuit design firms determine whether or not IP is fit for purpose or suitable for cost-effective migration. This partnership means Sofics’ specialist IP portfolio will now be included in the recommended target technology candidates.

“This announcement is about the coming together of two market-leading solutions,” said Sowmyan Rajagopalan, Thalia Design Automation CTO. “This latest iteration of our Technology Analyzer uses machine-learning to rapidly compare the source and target process technologies, enabling business case and commercial modelling to be undertaken for our clients. They are then able to assess migration value before committing resource. Adding Sofics’ ESD protection and other I/Os into the target options will enable solutions to be found and implemented much more rapidly.”

“IP houses want to optimize the value of existing assets and extend portfolios through IP reuse,” said Koen Verhaege, CEO of Sofics. “Collectively, this is a solution that mitigates risk for customers when transitioning to new technology nodes. Sofics’ global reach means that we can bring a world-class technology solution to IP and IC firms.”

The AMALIA Technology Analyzer is an intuitive solution that addresses a comprehensive array of first and second order effects including FT, gm/id, Vdsat, Vt mismatches, corners, Monte Carlo mismatch impact and many others. The software integrates into several EDA design frameworks and can be customized to specific design flows.

Sofics leading I/O and ESD foundry independent IPs are adaptable to various technologies like high & low voltage, BCD, CMOS, SOI and FinFET. More than 100 fabless companies use Sofics’ solutions to enable higher performance, higher robustness while reducing design time and cost of SoC design.

Find out more about the AMALIA Technology Analyzer.