Adapteva Uses Magma’s RTL-to-GDSII Flow to Tape Out a 28-nm 64-Core Microprocessor Chip

The Magma flow is well-suited to the unique design and architectural challenges of the Epiphany-IV. This device includes tiled, high-performance floating-point processing cores with a unique and scalable floorplan architecture that is optimized for dense flip-chip package configurations such as extreme-performance applications with minimal footprint requirements.

Hydra, Magma’s multi-level, hierarchical design planning solution provided fast and accurate floor planning capabilities allowing Adapteva to densely pack multiple processor arrays. It also provided the fast and early feedback needed to meet power and package requirements. With Hydra’s comprehensive repeated block and semi- and fully-abutted planning support, Adapteva was able to experiment with a number of array configurations to achieve maximum performance and minimum area. Hydra also provided powerful 45-degree RDL routing capabilities ensuring maximum flip-chip package density.

With its unrivaled turnaround time and capacity, the Talus netlist-to-GDSII platform provided Adapteva with the flexibility to explore myriad different architectures. This convergent design flow also gave the designers additional confidence that early placement, timing, area, and power metrics would be met in the later phases of the design flow. This allowed the design team to focus on adding value to the product rather than expending time and effort on design flow considerations.

Talus’ robust multi-mode multi-corner capabilities and full-flow optimization with full AOCV support minimized margins enabling Adapteva to deliver a design with the smallest footprint and the highest performance.

The Talus’ Flow Manager™, optimized for the GLOBALFOUNDRIES’ 28nm SLP process, provided invaluable feedback and analysis during the architecture and configuration exploration stages. Magma’s experience in implementing the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm SLP sign-off reference flow also helped to accelerate the flow set up and optimization.