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Semiconductor Insights Awards Texas Instruments with the 2004 INSIGHT Award for Best System-on-ChipFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: OTTAWA, July 29, 2004 — Semiconductor Insights (SI), the leader in technical and patent analyses of integrated circuits and structures, today announced that it has awarded Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) with the 2004 INSIGHT Award for Best System-On-Chip (SoC) for its OMAP1612™ applications processor. "The smaller form factors required by today's mobile applications are driving on-chip integration. Increased miniaturization and integration presents new challenges to vendors in terms of design, verification, and test," said Dr. Lluis Paris, Director of TECHinsights for Semiconductor Insights. "Our recent analysis of TI's OMAP1612 device asserts the company’s SoC leadership position with a DSP core supporting all cellular standards, an ARM9 core, a complete set of peripheral interfaces, and a large amount of low-power DRAM memory, all packaged in a highly-integrated dual-die multi-chip module." SoC designers have to walk a fine line between too much and too little integration. Increased complexity requires additional area and often added mask layers to accommodate all digital logic and analog functions. A higher number of layers increases the base wafer price and lowers yields, and the added area lowers circuit yields yet again. On the other hand, the proper amount of integration creates a combination of high functionality, high performance and low cost that cannot be achieved using separate components. There are five key criteria that help determine a SoC’s relative market success - total system cost, power consumption, performance (RF and application), size, and time to market. "With numerous and oft-competing criteria, SoC design is a careful balancing act", said Paris. "Our analysis of the OMAP1612 processor highlights TI’s tradeoff decisions, successfully delivering a cost effective SoC with low power and high performance that supports all cellular standards." The application processor in the OMAP1612 uses a low-power 130nm process optimized for wireless applications. The processor has three different power domains - ARM, DSP, and the rest of the circuit. "We appreciate Semiconductor Insights’ position as a leader in circuit and structural analyses and are honored to be recognized for our technical achievements with the OMAP1612 processor," said Avner Goren, Director of OMAP Products and Systems Marketing for TI. "With its advancements in performance, power consumption and space savings, the OMAP1612 device provides a strong foundation for the new OMAP 2 architecture." Read our Insight Report on the TI OMAP1612 ### About Semiconductor Insights — A Division of UBM Matt Dudley |
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