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Sarda Taps Magwel for GaAs Power Transistor Modeling

October 18, 2016 by Jeff Shepard

Sarda Technologies, a disruptive power management component supplier is announcing that it has adopted PTM, the power transistor modeling solution developed by Magwel to help in optimizing yield, performance and time-to-market of its Heterogeneous Integrated Power Stage (HIPS). Designed to address the rapidly escalating power consumption in data centers, Sarda's HIPS replaces silicon switches with gallium arsenide (GaAs) in voltage regulators that increase switching frequency by 10 times, improve transient response by 5 times and reduce size by 80%. With these fast, small voltage regulators, it enables granular power delivery to reduce data center power consumption by 30%.

Magwel’s PTM is now used by Sarda’s Engineers to predict GaAs power transistor performance before tape-out – reducing the risk of time consuming and expensive respins. Sarda is taking advantage of PTM’s ability to accurately predict Rdson, calculate and visualize three-dimensional interconnect current densities, voltage drop, as well as R and power dissipation per layer. It can also catch electro-migration violations that would otherwise affect product life and reliability.

PTM is easily deployed in power transistor design flows through integration with the most popular layout tools. PTM uses a 3D all-angle solver based extraction technology to accurately analyze power transistor performance. PTM’s advanced meshing and numerical solver provides more accurate and faster results than other tools. PTM works with the largest variety of power transistor types, including GaAs, CMOS, DMOS (lateral and vertical) and IGBT. Supported layout architectures include honeycomb, serpentine and other complex non-rectilinear topologies.

“Power transistor performance is a key differentiator for us. Magwel’s PTM gives us a competitive edge during the design process that helps ensure that we get the results we want in our final product. Our engineering team is much more confident now with PTM when they tape-out,“ said Greg Miller, Vice President of Engineering at Sarda.

“Sarda has game changing high speed switching technology for power management that dramatically improves efficiency and module size. Widespread application of HIPS will reduce the costs and the environmental footprint associated with rapidly growing server and mobile markets,” said Dündar Dumlugöl, Magwel CEO. “We are pleased that our PTM product was selected to help design these innovative devices.”

PTM is one component of a family of tools for power transistor modeling from Magwel. PTM-ET is used for concurrent electro-thermal modeling, and PTM-TR is a transient co-simulation solution for high and low-side power transistors in power management circuits.