The French start-up Tiempo broke on the US stage in a big way in recent months with appearances at the Embedded Systems Conference and Design Automation Conference. The Tiempo story is a compelling one for anyone interested in low power design – which is just about everyone who is designing chips for consumer and mobile markets.
The Tiempo approach is based on asynchronous and delay insensitive circuits, which allow low power consumption characteristics without limiting performance. Very cool (literally). They have proven their approach in some test chips, and even some end products in their secure card market. Now they have their sights set on bigger opportunities in wireless and mobile applications.
Asynchronous design has been talked about for a long time, but Tiempo seems to have cracked the code on making it a commercially viable solution. They allow the use of standard high level languages and have developed a specialized synthesis tool (called ACC) that works with existing EDA design flows. Their demo at DAC showed how clockless design styles can be used within a true timing-driven design flow.
Low power is all the rage right now so watch this space. Wired Island has already helped put Tiempo on the proverbial map, including placements like this in EE Times. We can take no responsibility for the performance of their country’s soccer team at the World Cup, though.
