Magma Introduces Hydra

Venice, Florida — Magma® Design Automation Inc. today announced Hydra^TM, an automated floorplan synthesis and hierarchical design planning product with physical optimization capabilities. Hydra takes timing, power, congestion and area into consideration and generates an implementation-ready floorplan. The new tool combines automated chip planning, automated partitioning and physical block shaping, top-level clock-tree generation and time budgeting for block-level implementation. Unlike traditional approaches that require manual macro placement, Hydra is offers a fully automated shape-aware and congestion-aware macro placer.

Hydra can be used in third-party flows or integrated with Magma's Talus® IC implementation system. Used in conjunction with Talus Design or Talus Vortex, Hydra offers seamless integration from prototyping to implementation within the same data model. Hydra is also seamlessly integrated with RioMagic^TM, Magma's package-aware chip planning solution, enabling early IO planning and placement tradeoffs for both peripheral and flip-chip packages and full-chip DRC-clean 45-degree redistribution layer (RDL) routing.

"As IC designs continue to grow in size and complexity, manual floorplanning and hierarchical design techniques must be augmented by automated solutions," said Kam Kittrell, general manager of Magma's Design Implementation Business Unit. "Hydra offers an open system that generates high-quality floorplans, making Hydra a 'must-have' tool for today's designers."

Designers can manage the complexity of multimillion-gate designs and reliably achieve timing closure thanks to a number of Hydra capabilities:

• Full hierarchical methodology supports bottom-up block-based flows, top-down black-box flows and mixed bottom-up/top-down flows with automated floorplanning, partitioning and time budgeting.
• Early design planning is possible using a netlist consisting of a mix of gates, RTL, macros, black-box models and GlassBox^TM models. Provides quick design prototype feedback for floorplan, design and timing constraint refinement.
• Automated hierarchy management, physical partitioning, macro placement and soft block shaping save runtime and manual effort, and also provide improved timing, area and quality of results.
• Relative Floorplanning Constraints^TM eliminate manual intervention when changes need to be made in logical hierarchy or size and shape of physical partitions.
• Leverages the same placement, timing, routing and analysis engines as the Talus IC implementation platform.

Based on Magma's unified data model, Hydra enhances productivity, provides ease of use by eliminating unnecessary, error-inducing and time-consuming file transfers. The new product is available as a standalone product, or integrated within the Magma flow. For pricing and other information, email Pricing information was not available. vVsit Magma's website to register for an in-depth demo on Hydra at the Design Automation Conference, June 9-14 in Anaheim.