Semiconductor design experts from industry and academia are this year’s winners of the Silicon Integration Initiative’s Power of Partnerships Award, recognizing the Si2 team that has made the most significant contributions to the field of electronic design automation.
Led by Jerry Frenkil, Si2 director of OpenStandards, members of the Unified Power Model Working Group are being honored for developing Si2 UPM, a system-level power modeling standard which helps designers describe, analyze, and control power consumption, critical factors in reducing overall design costs and increasing chip performance.
Honorees from the UPM Working Group are:
Nagu Dhanwada, senior technical staff member, IBM, Working Group Chair
Allen Baker, lead software developer, Ansys
Daniel Cross, principal solutions engineer, Cadence Design Systems
Rhett Davis, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NC State University
David Ratchkov, founder and CEO, Thrace Systems
UPM was created under the auspices of the OpenStandards Coalition, a technology incubator developing critical enabling technologies for fast-track industry approval toward standardization. Frenkil said the working group “has pioneered new methods for power modeling and analysis, leading to increased power efficiency. This has created new opportunities for system architects, SoC designers, IP providers, and EDA developers to estimate and control power consumption, especially at the system level.”
UPM led directly to the creation of the IEEE Standard for Power Modeling to Enable System Level Analysis, or IEEE 2416-2019. This standard is based almost entirely on the efforts of the UPM working group.
Each Si2 coalition nominates one team for the annual Power of Partnerships award, which spotlights the essential role volunteers from Si2 member companies play in Si2’s continuing success and value to the industry. The Si2 board of directors selects the winners.
Runners up for 2020 are:
Compact Model Coalition, Open Model Interface Working Group
Chair, Colin Shaw, Silvaco
Contributed to Si2 initially by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, OMI is built around the TSMC Model Interface. OMI allows circuit designers to simulate and analyze such significant physical effects as self-heating and aging, and to perform extended design optimizations, including statistical modeling of process variations.
OpenAccess Coalition, Polygon Operators Working Group
Chair, James Masters, Intel
The Polygon Operators Working Group develops oaxPop, an API extension used with Si2 OpenAccess, the world’s most widely used open reference database for IC design. Originally contributed to Si2 by Intel, oaxPop brings the power of the popular Boost Polygon Library into the expanding OpenAccess design database ecosystem.