DAFCA Receives $1.8 Million
ATP Grant to Develop Reconfigurable Infrastructure Platform for
System-on-Chip Electronics
FRAMINGHAM, Mass. – September 28, 2004
– DAFCA Inc., a provider of electronic design automation
(EDA) software tools that enable rapid debug and faster time-to-volume
of complex SoCs, today announced that the company has been awarded an
Advanced Technology Program (ATP) grant totaling $1.8 million from the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a division of
the U.S. Department of Commerce. The grant will fund a three-year
research program that aims to extend applicability of their
reconfigurable infrastructure platform for system-on-chip (SoC) devices.
NIST’s ATP awards are granted to applicants on the basis of
technological difficulty and innovation, as well as economic benefits
to the nation. DAFCA’s ATP grant will fund creation of
in-situ error correction and yield enhancement tools that would save
the semiconductor industry several billion dollars per year.
“Every SoC design team - from large device manufacturers to
fabless semiconductor companies - is a potential beneficiary of the
technology we will create with ATP’s support,” said
Peter L. Levin, DAFCA’s president and CEO. There are over
1,750 SoC design starts per year. “These chips integrate the
once-discrete components found inside products like cell phones and
digital cameras, and almost always require some sort of silicon debug.
We are very pleased that ATP
shares our view that a breakthrough in SoC debug and fix that results
in faster time-to-volume production of next generation devices will
make a significant contribution to our country’s economy.
This is an exciting project, and we are eager to get
started.”
DAFCA co-founder and chief technology officer, Miron Abramovici, will
lead the effort as principal investigator. DAFCA merges conventional
ASIC technology with a new form of reconfigurable logic. The
company’s pre-silicon tools insert infrastructure
intellectual property (IP) in the form of a distributed reconfigurable
fabric into an SoC during its design process. In contrast to
fixed-logic infrastructure that is used once and then becomes
permanent, rigid ballast, DAFCA’s fabric
provides an infrastructure platform that can be reconfigured and reused
by post-silicon tools to implement different applications. This new
technology enables chip designers to rapidly achieve
working silicon and significantly reduces the time-to-market of their
end product. Initially funded by private investors, this technology has
attracted early customers and technology development partners. DAFCA is
well-positioned to lead the deployment and establish the
standard for reconfigurable infrastructure.
The first version of DAFCA’s technology will support a subset
of the assertions ordinarily used in pre-silicon verification. The
company will apply ATP funding to address the challenge of
incorporating complex design assertions into the basic reconfigurable
system. This research will expand the range of meaningful
simulation-to-silicon comparisons, shorten the debug and error
correction cycles, and accelerate the proliferation of reconfigurable
infrastructure in design methodologies.
About the Advanced
Technology Program
The Advanced Technology Program, managed by
the National Institute of Standards and Technology, provides
cost-shared funding to industry for high-risk R&D projects with
the potential to spark important, broad-based economic benefits for the
United States. The awards are made on the basis of a rigorous
peer-reviewed selection process. For more information, consult the ATP
web site, www.atp.nist.gov.
About DAFCA
DAFCA is an electronic design automation (EDA) software company
developing a product suite for the post-silicon debug and error
correction inside large systems- on-chip (SoC) integrated circuits.
DAFCA’s reconfigurable infrastructure will enables chip
designers to rapidly achieve working silicon and significantly reduce
the time-to-market of their devices. Learn more about the company by
visiting their web site at http://www.dafca.com.
Editor’s Note: Please see the following link to read the NIST
announcement of this award: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/atpaward09-04.htm
A link to the NIST factsheet on this ATP competition can be found at:
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/
factsheet/atp2004/00-00-6773_factsheet.htm
