Preparing for the year 2002-which Dataquest Inc. believes will be the first in which system-level-LSI ASIC starts outnumber other ASIC starts-Fujitsu Microelectronics Inc. this week will unveil a program targeted at customers seeking an early launch into the system-chip era.

Bami Bastani, executive vice president of the company's system LSI group, said that its IPWare Program will offer customers a comprehensive intellectual-property library; an Internet-based core repository, called the IP Highway; and methodology and tool environments to facilitate and expedite system-on-chip design.

Bastani said Fujitsu has been steadily building a library of cores over the past two years. Both internally developed and licensed from third parties, they range from functional blocks, such as like USB, PCI, IrDA, peripheral I/O and JPEG, to sophisticated standards, such as MPEG and ATM. Also included are processor and DSP cores, such as Sparclite, OakDSP and ARC.

The company will offer the cores with reference boards and software to enable functional verification. Bastani said that, in accordance with the strictures of the Virtual Socket Interface Alliance, Fujitsu has standardized core quality and documentation across the library.

Fujitsu will also offer its system LSI customers methodology and design environments. Design services are available to help customers select, use and integrate cores. Starting in the third quarter, Bastani said, customers will be able to access proprietary, Fujitsu-developed cores-along with third-party cores, design-service organizations and core-information providers-via the IP Highway.

Avant! Corp. has announced initial offerings of its 0.18-micron FastTrack Libra-Passport library, targeting system-on-chip designers.

The company claims the system-on-chip designs it has developed using the library offer up to a 55 percent reduction in die size and a 30 percent improvement in timing over 0.25-micron designs. The library-which includes standard cells, I/Os and memory compilers-also offers 1.8-V supply voltage and quiet I/Os with 2.5-V input tolerance

Avant! said it is introducing the library in phases to give designers a head start in IC development as foundries ramp up to 0.18-micron availability.

The initial FastTrack release is available now to give developers a leg up on synthesis, simulation, floor planning and preliminary place-and-route. A full prototype release will be available in the fourth quarter to enable final place-and-route and simulation for manufacturing engineering prototypes. A production release is due out early next year.

Avant! said it worked with a number of foundries, including TSMC and UMC, in its test-chip endorsement program to ensure that library elements manufactured in different facilities have similar performance, yield and quality. With the Libra-Passport libraries, customers send their completed design to the foundry of their choice without modification and without trading off library performance, the company said.