July 17, 2012 -- Cadence Design Systems, Inc. announced today that Sharp Corp. has adopted the Cadence RTL-to-GDSII flow to develop its CMOS image sensors, resulting in a 2X faster turn-around time over its previous digital flow. In addition to speeding time-to-market, Sharp reported higher quality of results in timing, area and productivity.

"Once we switched to the Cadence Encounter RTL-to-GDSII flow, we saw dramatic improvements in turn-around time and better-quality designs," said Naoya Fujita, Division Deputy General Manager and Department General Manager of the Product Planning Department, Sensing Device Division in Sharp's Electronic Components and Devices Group. "We exceeded our design requirements and expectations."

Sharp's adoption of the integrated Cadence RTL-to-GDSII flow included standardizing on Encounter RTL Compiler, Encounter Conformal Equivalence Checker, Encounter Digital Implementation, and Encounter Test. Among the benefits Sharp cited were better congestion handling and faster timing convergence than with its previous methodology.

Posted by: John Miklosz