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Cimaron's Sonet thrust; Zoran forms graphics alliances
Cimaron Communications Corp. (Lawrence, Mass.) may not be the first to offer cores for Synchronous Optical Networks (Sonet), but with two different cores supporting the 2.5-Gbit/second speed of OC-48, it can claim to have the fastest.
Cimaron, formerly known as Siltek, was founded by ex-Lucent Technologies ASIC engineer Ram Sudireddy, with a mission of providing cores for Sonet, ATM, Internet Protocol packet-over-Sonet and other telecommunications applications.
The SR48FRPI core is for applications in which a mix of STS-48c, STS-12c, STS-3c and STS-1c signals may be carried inside an OC-48 payload. The S48CFRPI version represents the special case where the transport carries only STS-48c full-speed payloads.
Both cores support selectable scramble/descramble, loop-back diagnostics, and transport and path overhead monitoring. Information on source code, synthesis scripts, functional specs and test support are available from the company's Web site.
Zoran Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) has announced an alliance with 16 graphics-accelerator companies, including IX Micro, Nvidia and Silicon Motion, to deliver high-performance DVD software decoding for the PC market. Ten of these companies are using using Zoran's software-only DVD decoder, SoftDVD, in conjunction with its 5,000-gate motion-compensation core.
According to Zoran, the licensees are in the process of integrating the technology-independent, motion-compensation core in soft format into their future graphics-accelerator products. In addition, Zoran has signed four joint-development agreements to adapt SoftDVD to graphics accelerators containing third-party motion compensation.
Zoran believes the combination of SoftDVD and graphics accelerators with motion compensation will provide a high-performance, low-cost software DVD-playback solution for multimedia PCs, eliminating the need for dedicated hardware.
This week at DATE98 in Paris, Sagantec will release a tool for its Dream (design rule enforcement and migration) process-migration environment called Companion. The tool is meant to increase development and optimization of hard cores and cell libraries.
According to Sagantec, the Dream subset can easily target cell libraries and cores to new process technologies, ensuring process independence. It examines the preliminary layout and uses Dream's polygon-edge repositioning to render the place-and-route into an optimized physical design. It also guides the designer to a denser layout by pointing out congested areas in the cell.
Demonstrations of Companion and Dream will be shown at DATE98. The first release of Companion will focus on the design of leaf-cells for cell libraries or memory instances.
Available in June running on Unix, Companion will cost $40,000. Cadence's Virtuoso layout editor, version 4.3 or 4.4, is required to run Companion.
Edited by Michael Santarini, with a contribution from Loring Wirbel.
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