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Avant!, TI Sign Deal On Design Tool Tech fremont, calif -- Avant! entered into a beta site and joint development agreement last week with Texas Instruments on next generation design tool technology. TI and Avant! will jointly develop models and calibrate Avant!'s Taurus tools for TI's move to very deep submicron manufacturing processes. The deal also facilitates TI's adoption of computer-aided design into its technology development and IC manufacturing. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed as Avant! cited an agreement with TI not to discuss details. Through the deal, Avant! will commit one person to TI's facilities for the development work, and TI will provide Avant! with additional validation of Taurus on advanced CMOS technology, explained Roy Jewell, Avant! CEO Staff for corporate affairs. Primarily, the two companies will be engage in building models or equations for the software. "This is a real opportunity for us," said Mr. Jewell, who pointed out that it is unusual for a company like TI to allow the supplier to get a person on the development site. In a statement, Gerry Hsu, president/CEO/chairman of Avant! said, "this contract with Texas Instruments further confirms that customers value Avant!'s ability to give designers early access to silicon." As part of this deal, TI will license Avant!'s Taurus-Process and Taurus-Device, as well as Avant!'s Silicon Early Access suite of tools. Taurus-Process and Taurus-Device tools help semiconductor engineers to predict, through modeling techniques, wafer processing steps, as well as device structural characteristics and electrical characteristics, in very deep submicron device. The tools model advanced semiconductor devices in one, two, and three dimensions. Already in production release, Taurus has been in use at Toshiba through a similar development agreement for six months. The deal with Toshiba does not involve an on-site Avant! designer. Silicon Early Access includes electrical simulation of device characteristics in a design-for-manufacturing environment, interconnect model development and validation, and 3D interconnect extraction as part of a full-chip extraction process. All are linked to Avant!'s Milkyway VDSM common database. |