Enabling Tapeouts by Early Adopters of Arm’s Mobile Processors

It has been announced that Synopsys and Arm have collaborated to enable tapeouts of optimized system-on-chip (SoC) design and verification for early adopters of Arm’s latest premium mobile processor IP, including the Arm Cortex-A77 CPU and Mali-G77 GPU.

Synopsys solutions enable optimized design of smartphones, laptops, other mobile devices, 5G, augmented reality (AR), and machine learning (ML) products using Arm’s new processors including Synopsys’ Fusion Design Platform, Verification Continuum Platform, and DesignWare Interface IP.

In addition, Synopsys’ QuickStart Implementation Kits (QIKs) for Cortex-A77 and Cortex-A55 in 7-nanometer (nm) process technology using Arm Artisan Physical IP and POP IP are available today to accelerate time-to-market and achieve optimal power, performance, and area (PPA).

“For more than 25 years, our collaboration with Synopsys has enabled designers to bring innovative products to market quickly while meeting power, performance, and area targets,” said Ian Smythe, Vice President of Marketing, Client Line of Business, Arm. “Building on the previous successes of the Cortex-A76 and the Neoverse N1 platform, early engagement with Synopsys on our new suite of IP has delivered complete solutions to enable the next generation of Arm-based mobile devices.”

The QIKs for Cortex-A77 and Cortex-A55 leverage the collaboration that enabled successful early adopter tapeouts of products using the previous generation of Arm premium mobile processor IP. The QIKs, which include implementation scripts and reference guides, take advantage of new Fusion Technology to deliver enhanced PPA and faster turnaround.

The QIKs were built using Arm POP technology optimized for these Arm-based mobile processors in 7nm process technology. To help designers achieve their targets quickly and confidently, Synopsys offers design services based on extensive experience hardening Arm processors; services available range from QuickStart implementation through turnkey core hardening.

Synopsys’ Fusion Design Platform has been leveraged for optimized implementation of the new mobile cores:

• Seven nanometer and below implementation in Fusion Compiler design, Design Compiler Graphical synthesis, and IC Compiler II place-and-route system.
• Higher performance with automatic density control and timing-driven placement.
• Lower power with full-flow concurrent clock and datapath (CCD) optimization.
• Signoff closure with PrimeTime PBA-based ECO with power recovery and exhaustive PBA along with StarRC simultaneous multi-corner extraction.
• Early, accelerated design optimization for power integrity and reliability with the RedHawk Analysis Fusion signoff-driven flow within IC Compiler II.

Early adopters of Arm’s new premium mobile platform are using Synopsys’ Verification Continuum solutions extensively:

• Synopsys Virtualizer Development Kit (VDK) Family for Arm processors, with Arm Fast Models for Cortex-A77 and Cortex-A55, and Synopsys HAPS FPGA-based prototypes.
• Synopsys VCS simulation with fine-grained parallelism technology for Arm Cortex-A processors.
• Synopsys industry-first verification IP and test suites for the latest Arm AMB interconnect.
• Synopsys ZeBu emulation.

Synopsys’ high-quality DesignWare Interface IP enables rapid development of mobile Arm-based SoCs.

DesignWare IP for mobile markets includes controllers and PHYs for USB, DDR, PCI Express, MIPI, and mobile storage interfaces, and is shipping in billions of units today.

Deirdre Hanford, Co-General Manager, Synopsys Design Group, said: “Early adopters of Arm’s latest premium mobile platform IP, including Cortex-A77 CPU and Mali-G77 GPU, benefit from our early and deep collaboration with Arm to co-optimize our design, verification, and interface IP solutions.

“Building on our collaboration on previous generations of Arm premium mobile IP, especially including Cortex-A76, the combination of Synopsys’ Fusion Design Platform, Verification Continuum Platform, and DesignWare Interface IP delivers superior power, performance, and area with accelerated time-to-market for Arm-based products, enabling tapeout success for early adopters.”

QIKs for the new Cortex-A77, Cortex-A55, and other key Arm processors are available now.