How Intel manages IT through downturn — Server and data center optimization!

Ever wondered how Intel is managing IT through the downturn — Server and data center optimization? According to Kenny Sng, data center engineering manager, Intel Technology Asia Pte Ltd, there are three key things that Intel IT does. These are:

• Internal efficiencies are critical in freeing up resources and reducing operational costs.

• Server refresh is a key strategy to ensure IT runs efficiently.

• Intel continues to look at innovation in DC operations for reducing running costs

Server and data center optimization? Intel's Kenny Sng, data center engineering manager, making a point!

How can IT make a difference?

* Drive employee productivity — by way of mobile client refresh

* Drive business productivity

* Continue IT efficiencies — by way of data center and server refresh

Intel data center profile

Intel has four major groups currently driving individual data center requirements (DOME).

Design:

Support the chip design community

Design Computing: Has most of the servers in Intel

Office:

Supporting typical IT and customer services

General Purpose

Manufacturing:

Manufacturing computing supporting fabrication and assembly

FAB/ATM

Enterprise:

Enterprise applications supporting eBiz and ERP

About 80 percent of servers in Intel are in D. And, 20 percent of servers in Intel are in O, M and E, categories.

Intel IT’s approach to data center optimization

Intel’s approach is very simple — standardize, improve and optimize.

Standardize

* Supply and demand forecasting

* Processes and design specs

* Overall data center structure

All of this  enables IT and consolidations, prevents unnecessary spending and ensures consistency in the overall data center structure.

Improve

* Batch processing pools via grid computing (DCV) – (D)

* Virtualization (DCU) – (O) & (E)

* Replace single core with quad-core servers

* Information Lifecycle Management

* Intel “Green” data center initiatives

* Containerized Data Centers

These go on to reduce server spending and storage/hardware expenses, Contain costs (network, power, space), simplify the environment and well, improve energy efficiency by at least 6x.

Optimize

* Close inefficient and unnecessary data centers

* Assure batch and virtualized servers are in optimal data center locations

What do these do? One, maximize data center utilization in all locations, and two, maximize server asset utilization across the world.

Synopsys' Galaxy Custom Designer tackles analog mixed signal (AMS) challenges

Synopsys Inc. recently unveiled its Galaxy Custom Designer solution, the industry’s first modern-era mixed-signal implementation solution. Architected for productivity, the Galaxy Custom Designer leverages Synopsys’ Galaxy Design Platform to provide a unified solution for custom and digital designs, thereby enhancing designer efficiency.

Galaxy Custom Designer delivers a familiar user interface while integrating a common use model for simulation, analysis, parasitic extraction and physical verification. It is the first-ever implementation solution built natively on the OpenAccess database for legacy designs as well as a new componentized infrastructure offering unprecedented openness and interoperability with process design kits (PDKs) from leading foundries.

Subhash Bal, Country Director, Synopsys (India) EDA Software Pvt. Ltd, highlighted three key features: One, it is architected for productivity. Two, it is a complete custom design solution. And three, it is based on an open environment.

The key question: why the Galaxy Custom Designer, and why now? Simple! The modern AMS era is characterized by interdependent custom and digital functions; analog IP is now mainstream; and there is the phenomena of an increased embedded memory. Current solutions are said to possess limited horizon. Hence, Galaxy!

A new solution is said to be the need of the hour, which is complete — verification and implementation, with common models, extraction, analysis. Re-spin is not an option. Next, unified implementation, which addresses both custom and cell based needs. Custom and cell based functions are highly interdependent. Also, close to 100 percent of designs today are AMS.

Finally, the solution has to be open and portable. This accelerates the design cycle and IP portability. Also, quicker access to process details is a must! Architected for productivity, Galaxy Custom Designer has a similar look and feel, and works using fewer clicks — three as against six!

Galaxy Custom Designer’s Schematic Editor has productivity enhancers such as real-time connectivity, on-canvas editing and smart connect. Similarly, productivity enhancers for its Layout Editor include push button DRC and Extract, standard TCL and Python PCells, and auto via and guard ring generation. The WaveView Analyzer has features such as highest capacity and performance, complex analysis toolbox, and an automated TCL verification scripting.

A unified platform for cell and custom means superior ease of use, performance, capacity and data integrity. Open and portable, it facilitates plug-and-Play IP as well as standards based PDK, which means one PDK for all tools, added Synopsys’ Bal.

The IPL (Interoperable PDK Libraries) is an industry alliance established on April 2007 to collaborate on the creation and promotion of interoperable process design kit (PDK) standards.

Wipro Technologies has been among the early users of the Galaxy Custom Designer. I also managed to speak with Anand Valavi, Group Head, Analog Mixed-Signal Group, Wipro Technologies.

Valavi said: “From an EDA tool perspective, in AMS area, the amount of productivity is a lot less than in the digital area. The per transistor productivity for a digital designer is several magnitudes higher than an analog designer.”

The methodology is definitely not as evolved as in the digital area. According to him, ‘This productivity will now increase for analog and AMS areas, and people can do a lot more complex designs in a shorter period of time. There has been a lot of integration.”

On the salient features or enhancements, he said there have been reasonably good improvement in several areas. One, there is an alternative, now, and that brings a lot of advantages. Two, when you take it down to next level, there are several other technical reasons.

Valavi added that an integrated environment definitely improved the productivity. There are other minor things. When you start using it, there are things that helps technical users — for example, an on-canvas editing. Also, the usage or collaborative results in the iPDK libraries will improve the effectiveness in chips designs that are churned out. “It will surely give people working in analog design area a choice,” he noted.

Mentor on EDA trends and solar/PV

This is a continuation of my recent discussion with Joseph Sawicki, vice president & GM, Design to Silicon Division, Mentor Graphics.

There have been whispers that the EDA industry has been presently lagging behind semiconductors and is in the catch-up mode. “That’s a matter of perspective. There are definitely unsolved challenges at 32nm and 22nm, but the reality is that we are still in the technology development stage,” he says.

For EDA tools that address implementation and manufacturing issues (i.e., Mentor design-to-silicon products), there are dependencies that cannot be fully resolved until the process technology has stabilized. Mentor Graphics is laying the groundwork for those challenges and working in concert with the process technology leaders to ensure that our products address all issues and are production-worthy before the process technology goes mainstream.

On the other hand, although Mentor’s products are fully-qualified for 45nm, there have only been a handful of tapeouts at that node, so for the majority of customers, we are ahead of the curve.

On ESL and DFM as growth drivers
ESL and DFM are said to be the new growth drivers. Sawicki adds: “As Wally Rhines has said in his public presentations, system level design and IC implementation are the stages of development where there are the most challenges, and therefore the most opportunities. To continue the traditional grow spiral that the electronic industry has enjoyed as a result of device scaling, we need more sophisticated EDA solutions to deal with both of these challenges.”

ESL is responding to the growth of design complexity and the need for earlier and more thorough design verification, including low power characteristics, and software integration.

The Design-to-Silicon division is addressing the issues of IC implementation which result not only from the increase in design complexity and devices sizes, but also from increasing sensitivity of the manufacturing process to physical design decisions, a phenomenon often referred to as “manufacturing variability.”

Although the term “Design-For-Manufacturing” reflects the need to consider manufacturability in design and to optimize for both functional and parametric yield, it is important to emphasize that DFM is not simply an additional tool or discrete step in the design process, but rather an integration of manufacturing process information throughout the IC implementation flow.

With single threading, we can no longer handle designs over 100 million gates. Of course, at 45nm, you can do a 100mn gates. That rewriting process is another issue that is also slowing out. It would be interesting to see how is Mentor handling this.

According to Sawicki, Mentor has incorporated sophisticated multi-threading and multi-processing technologies into all of its performance-sensitive applications, from place-and-route, through physical verification, resolution enhancement and testing.

He says, “Our tools have a track record of impressive and consistent and performance and scalability improvements, which is why we continue to lead the industry in performance.”

In addition to merely adding multi-threading and support for multi-core processors, Calibre products have a robust workflow management environment that automatically distributes the processing workload in the most efficient manner across any number of available clustered computing nodes.

Mentor’s Olympus-SoC place-and-route is inherently scalable due to its advanced architecture which includes an extremely efficient graph representation for timing information, and a very concise memory footprint. In addition, all the engines within Olympus-SoC can take advantage of multi-threaded and multi-core processors for high performance. These features enable Olympus-SoC to handle 100M+ gates designs in flat mode without excessive turnaround time.

Mentor’s ATPG tools are also designed to operate in multiprocessing mode over the multiple computing platforms to reduce test pattern generation time. In addition, Mentor test pattern compression technology reduces test pattern volume and test time, making it feasible to fully test 100M gate devices and maintain product quality without an explosion in test cost.

With EDA is starting to move up to the system level, will this make EDA less dependent on the semiconductor world?

Sawicki agrees that there are challenges at both the front end and back end of the electronic products design and manufacturing life cycle. Both of these opportunities are growing. In addition, developments like multi-level (3D) die packaging, through-silicon via (TSV) structures and other non-traditional techniques for device scaling are pushing system and silicon design issues closer together.

Reaching the 22nm node will require highly compute intensive EDA techniques for physical design to compensate for limitations in the manufacturing process. Beyond that, we could see a major shift to new materials and manufacturing techniques that would open new green fields for EDA in the IC implementation flow.

EDA going forward
How does Mentor see the EDA industry evolving, going forward?

Sawicki adds: “There are three key trends to watch. Firstly, for design to remain affordable at the leading edge, we need to enable radical increases in productivity. Electronic System Level (ESL) design is the key here, allowing designers to move to a new level of abstraction for both design and verification.

“Secondly, the challenges of manufacturing a well-yielding and reliable device as we move to 22nm will require a far more sophisticated physical implementation environment—one that accounts for physical effects in the design loop, and accounts for manufacturing variability in it’s optimization routines.

“Finally, the manufacturing challenges also open significant opportunity for EDA in the manufacturing space. A great example of this is the September 17, 2008 announcement we did with IBM on a joint development program to enable manufacturing at the 22nm node.”

Finally, given the roles already defined by Magma and Synopsys in solar, is there an opportunity for EDA in solar/PV?

According to Sawicki, as the photovoltaic devices have very simple and regular structures, most of the opportunity for EDA is not in logic design tools, but in material science, transistor-level device modeling, and manufacturing efficiencies with a focus on conversion efficiency and manufacturing cost reduction.

EDA’s role in solar will be in the newer areas related to Design-for-Manufacturing and other manufacturing optimizations, he concludes.

Our last discussion on DFM will follow in a later blog post!