Are You SAFE Yet? Leveraging the Ecosystem to Boost Your Product Time to Market

We live in a rapidly growing “digitalized world,” with an ever-increasing need for video/music streaming, gaming, AI/machine learning, etc. All of these propel demand on modern SoC design to quickly evolve the SoC by fitting more sophisticated features (capable of doing/generating more compute power), adopting the latest and greatest interface protocol to achieve the required higher data rate transport (bandwidth) support, and to shorten the design turnaround time for faster time to market.

The number of design considerations/complexity in SoC design has increased exponentially in the past decade. We’re not just eyeing the SoC size (building bigger and more powerful SoCs); we also consider the design infrastructure (EDA support), new process technology development, and IP availability. These can’t be easily achieved by a single company alone without a broader collaboration/partnership within the industry.

Cadence’s Silicon Solution Group (SSG) has dedicated itself to continuously innovating its IP solution (the core value and strength), as well as actively participating within industry standard groups to grow with the industry. For instance, Cadence has been very active in working groups to help drive the evolution of the PCI Express standard. Cadence is well recognized in the market as the leader in PCIe solutions.

Introduced in 2018, the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (also known as SAFE™) program was designed to facilitate the collaboration between Samsung Foundry and the ecosystem partners, such as Cadence, in areas of IP, Electronic Design Automation (EDA), and Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT). Cadence SSG began its IP collaboration with Samsung Foundry over 10 years ago, starting with selected 28nm IP design engagements enabling several strategic customer successes. Cadence quickly became a strategic partner to Samsung Foundry and continued its long-term partnership, working together to grow the IP ecosystem. Currently Cadence SSG is focusing on completing its platform IP solution in SF5A, which is being widely adopted by automotive customers.

The Cadence SSG team is proud to have successfully demonstrated PCIe 6.0 silicon success and achieved PCIe 5.0 compliance at the PCI-SIG compliance workshop in September 2023. We also have successfully showcased the interoperability test with other PCIe systems, being the first IP provider to do so in Samsung’s SF5A process node.

Within the SAFE™ program, Cadence’s SSG core strengths and key IP focus really stand out. Cadence PCIe, UCIe, Memory, and high-speed SerDes solutions allow joint customers to obtain a complete IP solution with a future-proof migration path. Through the support of multiple applications, Cadence IP delivers optimal power, performance, and area (PPA) with rich feature sets, offering customers a wide range of versatility, differentiation, and innovation for large-scale SoC designs. The collaboration between Cadence and Samsung Foundry helps customers speed up their time to market while increasing efficiency.

Discover how Cadence and Samsung Foundry accelerate chip innovation for advanced AI and 3D-IC applications.

Learn more about Cadence Protocol IP.