Recent from talks
NanGate
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
NanGate
NanGate, Inc was a privately held United States, Silicon Valley–based company dealing in electronic design automation (EDA) for electrical engineering and electronics until its acquisition by Silvaco, Inc. in 2018. NanGate was founded in October 2004 by a group of semiconductor professionals with a background from Intel Corporation and Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. The company has received capital investments from a group of Danish business angels and venture capital companies. The company is today owned and controlled by its management following a management buy-out in 2012. NanGate markets a range of software products and design services for the design and optimization of standard cell libraries and application-specific integrated circuits. The market focus is standard cell library design and optimization for 14–28 nanometer CMOS processes.
NanGate was founded in October 2004 by a group of semiconductor professionals from Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. Prior to Vitesse, the team had founded Exbit Technology, a fabless semiconductor start-up focused on the market for Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ASSPs used in high performance data and telecommunications switching and routing equipment. Exbit Technology was acquired by Vitesse Semiconductor Corp in 2001.
The technology and market idea behind the foundation of NanGate was to address and solve the inherent shortcomings of standard cell based ASSP/ASIC design as compared to full custom IC design. In standard cell design the designer uses cells from a standard cell library to implement the desired logic functionality of the IC while trying to obtain the target operating frequency at the lowest possible cost in terms of die area and power consumption. The standard cells form the basic building blocks used to build the IC together with macro blocks such as embedded memory, Input-Output (IO), mixed-signal and analog blocks. Each standard cell represents a relatively primitive logic function, such as a NAND gate, with fixed area, timing and power characteristics and is constructed from transistors most often arranged in the pull-up/pull-down fashion of CMOS. A typical standard-cell library for e.g. 40 nanometer CMOS has 500–1500 standard cells and about 150–300 different logic functions.
The benefits of the standard cell library design methodology are many but compared to full-custom IC design there is a large gap between what can be achieved when comparing the two methodologies in terms of highest possible operating frequency, lowest possible die area and power consumption. This is first and foremost due to the fact that in full-custom IC design, the engineer can handcraft and optimize the design on the transistor level without having to use only fixed-sized standard cells. Full-custom IC design is much more resource and time-consuming and only a minority of ICs have a market potential that is able to pay for such an investment in research and development.
NanGate addresses this gap by providing the IC designer with a range of software products that allow him to specify and create new standard cells with custom transistor layout in an automated manner. The IC designer can thereby augment and optimize the cell library used to implement the IC. This process of growing and tweaking the cell library enables higher performance, lower die area and lower power consumption which serve to narrow the gap between the standard-cell and full-custom design methodologies. This patent-protected technology is core to NanGate's range of software products.
During 2004–2006, the NanGate team worked on developing a library creation platform with built-in automation for layout creation and library characterization (the process of SPICE simulating the extracted circuit netlist with parasitics and building a model used for static timing analysis). This resulted in two software products, NanGate Library Creator(TM) and Nangate Library Characterizer(TM), the prototype versions of which were introduced at the annual Design Automation Conference in 2005 and the first official releases of the two products the following year, DAC-2006. Nangate Library Characterizer(TM) got on John Cooley’s best-of-DAC 2006 list.
In October 2005, NanGate established collaboration with UFRGS (a university located in Porto Alegre, Brazil) that resulted in NanGate Labs, and later in 2006 the establishment of NanGate do Brasil SA, a research and development subsidiary in the same location. The Brazilian based subsidiary was closed down in 2011 in order to consolidate the R&D teams in fewer locations.
In 2006, NanGate received US$10 million in venture capital investment from three Danish-based venture capital companies: Vækstfonden, IVS and SeeD Capital.
Hub AI
NanGate AI simulator
(@NanGate_simulator)
NanGate
NanGate, Inc was a privately held United States, Silicon Valley–based company dealing in electronic design automation (EDA) for electrical engineering and electronics until its acquisition by Silvaco, Inc. in 2018. NanGate was founded in October 2004 by a group of semiconductor professionals with a background from Intel Corporation and Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. The company has received capital investments from a group of Danish business angels and venture capital companies. The company is today owned and controlled by its management following a management buy-out in 2012. NanGate markets a range of software products and design services for the design and optimization of standard cell libraries and application-specific integrated circuits. The market focus is standard cell library design and optimization for 14–28 nanometer CMOS processes.
NanGate was founded in October 2004 by a group of semiconductor professionals from Vitesse Semiconductor Corp. Prior to Vitesse, the team had founded Exbit Technology, a fabless semiconductor start-up focused on the market for Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ASSPs used in high performance data and telecommunications switching and routing equipment. Exbit Technology was acquired by Vitesse Semiconductor Corp in 2001.
The technology and market idea behind the foundation of NanGate was to address and solve the inherent shortcomings of standard cell based ASSP/ASIC design as compared to full custom IC design. In standard cell design the designer uses cells from a standard cell library to implement the desired logic functionality of the IC while trying to obtain the target operating frequency at the lowest possible cost in terms of die area and power consumption. The standard cells form the basic building blocks used to build the IC together with macro blocks such as embedded memory, Input-Output (IO), mixed-signal and analog blocks. Each standard cell represents a relatively primitive logic function, such as a NAND gate, with fixed area, timing and power characteristics and is constructed from transistors most often arranged in the pull-up/pull-down fashion of CMOS. A typical standard-cell library for e.g. 40 nanometer CMOS has 500–1500 standard cells and about 150–300 different logic functions.
The benefits of the standard cell library design methodology are many but compared to full-custom IC design there is a large gap between what can be achieved when comparing the two methodologies in terms of highest possible operating frequency, lowest possible die area and power consumption. This is first and foremost due to the fact that in full-custom IC design, the engineer can handcraft and optimize the design on the transistor level without having to use only fixed-sized standard cells. Full-custom IC design is much more resource and time-consuming and only a minority of ICs have a market potential that is able to pay for such an investment in research and development.
NanGate addresses this gap by providing the IC designer with a range of software products that allow him to specify and create new standard cells with custom transistor layout in an automated manner. The IC designer can thereby augment and optimize the cell library used to implement the IC. This process of growing and tweaking the cell library enables higher performance, lower die area and lower power consumption which serve to narrow the gap between the standard-cell and full-custom design methodologies. This patent-protected technology is core to NanGate's range of software products.
During 2004–2006, the NanGate team worked on developing a library creation platform with built-in automation for layout creation and library characterization (the process of SPICE simulating the extracted circuit netlist with parasitics and building a model used for static timing analysis). This resulted in two software products, NanGate Library Creator(TM) and Nangate Library Characterizer(TM), the prototype versions of which were introduced at the annual Design Automation Conference in 2005 and the first official releases of the two products the following year, DAC-2006. Nangate Library Characterizer(TM) got on John Cooley’s best-of-DAC 2006 list.
In October 2005, NanGate established collaboration with UFRGS (a university located in Porto Alegre, Brazil) that resulted in NanGate Labs, and later in 2006 the establishment of NanGate do Brasil SA, a research and development subsidiary in the same location. The Brazilian based subsidiary was closed down in 2011 in order to consolidate the R&D teams in fewer locations.
In 2006, NanGate received US$10 million in venture capital investment from three Danish-based venture capital companies: Vækstfonden, IVS and SeeD Capital.