Tales From DAC: How Syntiant Went From Zero to Tapeout in Six Months

Here’s something to chew on:

Syntiant is an AI startup involved in deep learning technology and semiconductor design. Their goal is to create exceptionally low-power designs for always-on devices, like those used in speech detection.

Syntiant went from empty air to tapeout in six months.

That sounds hard to believe, but it’s true. They got their first venture-capital funding in October of 2017, taped out initial test chips in December, hit first product chip tape-out in March, and formally announced their company in May. This kind of timeline is completely unheard of—but thanks to Cadence technology, Syntiant’s scintillating success story—told at the Cadence Theater at DAC 2018—may be soon be more common than you think.

What do you need to start a semiconductor company? Lots of things, obviously—tools, data center access, EDA experts—the whole nine yards. How does a fledgling company like Syntiant gain access to all of these things? Building your own data center is expensive, and finding qualified EDA experts isn’t exactly easy—never mind purchasing all those tool licenses.

Thanks to Cadence, though, Syntiant only needed one thing: the Cadence Cloud.

Syntiant wanted speed. They wanted instant ramp-up, fast releases, a quick transition to SoC development, and—above all—a fast tapeout to silicon. Cadence Cloud-Hosted Design Solution got them all of those things, and it can get you all of those things, too. Cadence Cloud-Hosted is ready to go right out of the box, and you can use it while VPN connected to your secure chamber. If you’re not sure what you need yet, there’s the DEMO chamber, where you can familiarize yourself with the design environment and any of the Cadence tools. Then there’s the POC (proof-of-concept) where you test out a chamber created to your unique design specifications and tool requirements to ensure you purchase what’s right for you.

Cadence Cloud-Hosted allowed Syntiant to easily produce their test chips with Virtuoso, and use SystemC for their system modeling needs. They ended up using SystemC to build their full system model, taking advantage of SystemC’s object-oriented source language in C++. On top of that, Cadence Cloud-Hosted also allowed for their source code to be co-compiled into Python for use with Tensorflow.

The Cadence Cloud-Hosted Design Solution changed everything for Syntiant. The Virtuoso and Stratus environment let them ramp up quickly, understand the technology, make sound decisions and build up to substantial models in record time. On top of that, using the Cadence Cloud-Hosted Design Solution gave them access to Cadence AEs for assistance.

Six months to tapeout is no laughing matter. If you’re done joking around with inefficient flows, read more on the Cadence Cloud here.