RichTek Upgrades Both Custom Layout Tool and Productivity with Laker L3

RichTek, Taiwans no. 1 analog IC design company, dedicates in research and development of the most sophisticated solutions for power supply and management. Their product lines cover all 3C areas.

With the rapid growth in business, the companys Layout Team faces two key challenges:

1. Hard to find more experienced and qualified analog layout engineers.
2. Getting more layout productivity.

After being a customer of Silicon Canvas  Laker L2 since 2003, the team was satisfied with Laker L2s flexibility and controllability. By the time that L3 was introduced to RickTek, the Layout Team discovers even more dramatic productivity gain through controllable automation, performance, handcrafted quality and openness. The team looked forward to shave valuable layout time and add state of the art custom-layout tool to their projects.

"As our business size and the complexity of the projects grow rapidly, working with Laker AMS to perform Schematic-Driven Layout is very important to us," said James Liu, Vice President at RichTek. "We experienced the good performance of Laker L3. Moreover, MCell™ supports high voltage so we can create most of special devices through it directly without Tcl Plug-in. It strikingly increases the flexibility of our custom layout projects," "Weve also benefited from Silicon Canvas commitment to customer support. Our Layout Team receives first-rate service. Silicon Canvas and Laker have obviously helped our projects. We are in the situation that we have no choice but gain our productivity overwhelmingly to catch up the projects deadlines. Whenever we needed help, Silicon Canvas AE and Sales teams came through with highly responsive support."

After RichTek upgrades Laker custom layout tool from L2 to L3, the outcome is significant. RichTek saves 25% more time above Laker L2 in a major reduction of manual work. "As of hiring the experienced analog layout engineers isnt a one-minute-task, the more realistic way is to enhance the solid solution provider in full customer layout tool to match our needs in both time and quality," said Kan Ho, CAD Manager at RichTek. "Specific needs in layout preparation are considered in Design Hierarchical Manipulator, Matching Creator, Stick Diagram Compiler, and Automatic Transistor Placer. It proves that SDL flow makes business sense", Ho said further.

With Laker L3, RichTeks Layout Team has developed a production flow that enables effective, efficient custom layout. With the applications in many ways all over the products in the company such as power management units, switching converters, and LED driver ICs, it results in a win-win situation for both RichTek and Silicon Canvas. RichTek then upgrades Laker L2 to L3 as an extension for its full-custom layout tool.

"RichTek designs some of the worlds most advanced ICs in power supply and management. Their caliber and intension to quality give us great impressions while working with them. The pressure is enormous on RichTek to meet stringent layout requirement and deadlines," according to Hung-Lin Hsiao, Marketing Department Manager at Silicon Canvas, Inc. "Through Laker L3, Silicon Canvas offers the cutting edge solutions for full-custom layout resulting not only in huge savings, but also a great level of interactive capability that expedites full-custom layouts. Our innovative R&D efforts have stretched the performance again to keep pace with our customers   demanding schedules."