ProTiming by Prolific Inc. (Acquired by ARM)

Product Description

Prolific's ProTiming is final-pass timing optimization software that improves design performance by 5% - 10%, even on designs that have already been optimized by other tools. ProTiming optimizes timing by analyzing a block's critical paths and ranges, and then adjusting cell selection to increase performance.

Benefits
10% faster design performance
Works with any place-and-route flow
Works with any standard cell library
Automates timing closure

Straightforward Final-Pass Optimization
Running ProTiming requires only the Synopsys PrimeTime startup script and the library files. The designer selects the path groups to be optimized, and optimization can begin.

The designer can optionally specify limits on cell usage, set target slack, or set limits on the number of changes.

ProTiming is then ready to optimize at the click of a button, displaying its progress in graphical mode. ProTiming’s output is a simple ECO file or can optionally include netlist and placement files.

Real Improvements
Because ProTiming uses Synopsys' PrimeTime to measure performance, its improvements are not theoretical. They can be measured against the fully placed-and-routed input for objective comparison. In addition to being easy to validate, ProTiming is easier to use and more comprehensive than tuning a design by hand.

How It Works
ProTiming performs an exhaustive analysis of a block's critical paths and ranges. It analyzes the available standard cells, and then automatically and intelligently optimizes the use of available cells to maximize the design's performance. ProTiming uses an entirely different approach than standard place and route tools, thus providing an additional means of performance optimization. ProTiming also corrects any signal integrity errors identified by PrimeTime SI.

Minimum Hardware/OS Requirements
2GHz processor
2GB RAM
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 or later
Solaris 8 or later
HP-UX 11.0 or later

ProTiming

Market Segment(s)

• Embedded
• Enterprise
• Home
• Mobile

ARM Processor(s)

• ARM7EJ-S
• ARM7TDMI
• ARM720T
• ARM920T
• ARM922T
• ARM926EJ-S
• ARM940T
• ARM946E-S
• ARM966E-S
• VFP9-S
• ARM1020E
• ARM1022E
• ARM1026EJ-S
• VFP10
• ARM1136J-S
• ARM1136JF-S
• ARM1156T2(F)-S
• ARM1176JZ(F)-S
• ARM11 MPCore
• Cortex-A53
• Cortex-A57
• Cortex-A8
• Cortex-M3
• Cortex-R4
• SC100
• SC200
• SC300
• ARMv8
• StrongARM
• XScale
• Other

Physical IP

• Standard Cell Libraries