| TAIPEI,
TAIWAN— December 12, 2006— In collaboration with
the University of Tokyo and Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Alchip Technologies,
a leading fabless ASIC company, today announced
its first silicon success of the SING processor
for GRAPE-DR, the next generation of the world's
fastest supercomputers targeting 2,000 trillion
transactions per second (2PFLOPS). This chip features
512 CPUs on a single chip with over 60 million
logic gates and 10 million bits of SRAM utilizing
TSMC production-proven 90nm process and flip-chip
package technology.
The GRAPE series are the world's fastest supercomputers
and six-time winner of the Gordon Bell Prize,
an important recognition of outstanding achievement
in high-performance computing. Its practical computation
has yielded remarkable simulation results used
worldwide for scientific research in exploring
the planet and galaxy. GRAPE-DR is designed to
compute over 31 times faster than its predecessor
GRAPE-6 (64 trillion computations per second)
and to cover general computing.
Development of the SING processor was highly challenging
due to its large gate count complexity and performance
target. The SING processor contains over 60 million
logic gates aiming at 500MHz performance whole
chip w hile consuming over 50 watts of power.
Alchip was responsible for the complete design
integration which includes physical, electrical,
timing and thermal design of the System-on-Chip
( SoC ) project . The chip adopted TSMC's 90nm
eight-layer metal process with a silicon redistribution
layer (RDL) in a flip-chip BGA package. Alchip's
divide-and-conquer methodology was used to partition
the design into three levels of hierarchy for
parallel implementation. Alchip's unique on-chip
clocking distribution structure achieved minimum
global clock skew on the scale of 18mm by 18mm
die size. It enabled high speed operation by avoiding
serious nanometer on-chip variation (OCV) which
can affect circuits performance. Closer collaboration
with customer allowed Alchip to provide effective
design and packaging solutions to achieve one
- pass design tapeout and one - pass silicon success.
“Having selected Alchip as our SoC development
partner , we are extremely delighted and satisfied
with Alchip's on-time & one-pass silicon success
delivery of SING chip." said Professor Kei
Hiraki of the University of Tokyo .“ Alchip demonstrated
superior design and manufacturing capabilities
and supported the development of GRAPE-DR project
well. With Alchip's efforts, we are able to test,
demonstrate and create the system on time."
“TSMC supports a broad range of existing and emerging
applications," said Makoto Onodera, president
of TSMC Japan. “The GRAPE-DR project achieved
the first silicon success and marks a major collaborative
milestone among private, public, and academic
segments."
"Alchip is pleased
to provide total SoC solutions to the University
of Tokyo for the fastest supercomputer in the
world ," said Kinying Kwan, chairman, president
and chief executive officer of Alchip.“ The first
silicon success of this complex and challenging
chip illustrates Alchip's superior SoC design
capabilit ies in cutting-edge technologies and
demonstrates our robust turnkey infrastructure
that seamlessly integrates physical design, IP,
fabrication, packaging and testing solutions.
We will continue to delight our customers by powering
them with the fastest time-to-market and the lowest
total cost of ownership."
About GRAPE-DR
GRAPE-DR is a research project funded
by the University of Tokyo , National Astronomical
Observatory of Japan, Institute of Physical and
Chemical Research, NTT Communications plus corporations
and research organizations. Its goals are to construct
a 2PFLOPS computing engine and global research
infrastructure utilizing multi-10 Gbps networks
by 2008. For information about the GRAPE-DR project,
visit http://grape-dr.adm.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index-en.html
or contact Professor Kei
Hiraki at hiraki@is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp
About Alchip Technologies
Headquartered
in Taipei , Taiwan , Alchip Technologies is a
leading fabless ASIC/SoC provider for the world's
top system and semiconductor companies. Founded
in 2002 by semiconductor veterans from Silicon
Valley and Japan , Alchip delivers silicon design
and manufacturing solutions that provide customers
with time-to-market advantages. Alchip has proven
its capabilities in the fabless ASIC field by
successfully delivering on-time first silicon
success for high-end and complex SoC designs at
0.13um, 90nm and 65nm. With 170 employees worldwide,
Alchip has offices in Shin-Yokohama , Japan ,
Santa Clara , CA , Hsin-Chu , Taiwan and Shanghai
, China . For more information about Alchip, please
visit http://
alchip.com
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