#ALGORITHMS: "Startup Claims 'Holy Grail' of SoC Design"

Microchip design has traditionally required a good idea plus a staff of engineers skilled at translating ideas into transistor diagrams that need to be input to an electronic design automation (EDA) workstations, then validated, tested and debugged. The Holy Grail here would be a good idea cast into a C-program that is then automatically converted into a chip--just the business plan of this new startup. R. Colin Johnson


Algotochip starts with designers C-code (left) the generates an application-specific programmable microcontroller (top), and digital signal processor (DSP) along with a memory management unit (MMU) and input/output which implements an SoC.

The first automated software-to-chip dream came out of the closet Monday (April 23), when Algotochip Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) claimed to be able to produce a system-on-chip (SoC) design from a C-code specification in just eight to 16 weeks.
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