TetraMem Delivers RISC-V AI Accelerator Tape-Out in Record Time on Synopsys Cloud

Faster Time to Results and Elastic Compute Resources

The TetraMem team knew they needed smooth integration and verification of its complex AI accelerator’s analog in-memory computing technology and its digital RISC-V processor. Since project demands on EDA resources can fluctuate depending on the design stage, the team recognized that having scalable, elastic, on-demand access to these resources would be advantageous. Aggressive time-to-market targets also weighed on the team.

Synopsys Cloud proved to be the answer to all these challenges, enabling TetraMem to experience:

• A jump start on hardware development through a pre-configured, end-to-end analog design flow
• An intuitive, user-friendly browser-based platform for chip design
• Faster time to results through on-demand, pay-per-use access to unlimited EDA resources without licensing constraints
• Instant availability of scalable and advanced compute and storage resources

“We were able to achieve a very fast infrastructure setup on the Synopsys Cloud EDA environment within days,” said Wenbo Yin, VP of IC Design at TetraMem. “The vast selection of EDA tools and IP available on the cloud enabled us to start the design, verification, and backend flow very quickly. The flexibility of using as many licenses as we needed enabled us to obtain fast turnarounds on simulation, verification, and backend flow, which significantly reduced the engineering hours spent on those compute-intensive tasks. The ease of global access provided a single environment for our global R&D team with seamless access.”

Notes David George, TetraMem’s head of global operations: “We are creating the world’s most efficient AI accelerator chip, built around a RISC-V architecture and powered by our novel analog in-memory computing technology. Developing and integrating these elements requires a well-engineered platform to support an iterative and flexible design process in order to meet performance objectives with quality. With Synopsys Cloud, we are able to access a complete, pre-configured design flow that enables our global R&D teams to collaborate efficiently. This improved productivity for our entire team, and helped us architect a robust design for a first-of-its-kind technology.”

In addition to the technologies available through Synopsys Cloud, the TetraMem team also tapped into Synopsys’ worldwide support team. “One of our challenges from the start was bringing global team members up to speed to meet our product specifications and time-to-market goals,” said Charles Wei, the company’s director of SoC design. “The Synopsys sales, technical support, and R&D teams worked together to help us become familiar with the platform. Any EDA tool upgrades or new tool purchases are delivered immediately without worrying about CAD installation, global environment setup, version compatibility, etc. We trust that using Synopsys Cloud and collaborating with Synopsys for the development of our current and future SoC designs is the right choice.”