• When developing new technologies, time-to-market is a critical competitive factor for STMicroelectronics (ST). If the design cycle is delayed, additional compute resources are needed to maintain schedules, resulting in increasing IT cost and complexity. To alleviate already taxed systems, appropriate resource allocation was a key factor in the decision-making process.
• Additionally, the computer-aided design (CAD) work conducted by ST is complex and data intensive. Systems require high I/O bandwidth that can keep pace with demanding performance requirements and support various applications, both 32- and 64-bit.

• STMicroelectronics’ Asia Pacific Design Centre determined the best solution to meet its needs was an AMD Opteron™ processor-based Sun Fire™ V20z Grid computing solution.

• The AMD Opteron processor-based Sun Grid solution has increased the speed of ST’s time-to-market by a factor of four.
• Also, an increased flexibility in product development has allowed computing resources to be diverted to other critical areas, saving the company overall production costs.

STMicroelectronics (ST) is a global independent semiconductor company and is a leader in developing and delivering semiconductor solutions across the spectrum of microelectronics applications. The company currently offers over 3,000 types of products to more than 1,500 customers. In 2004, STMicroelectronics’ net revenues were US $8.76 billion and net earnings were US $601 million.

The Information Technology/Computer-Aided Design (IT/CAD) organization consolidates, manages and deploys all IT/CAD infrastructure and support within STMicroelectronics’ Asia Pacific Design Centre.

STMicroelectronics’ Asia Pacific Design Centre recognized the critical need to constantly provide solutions that enable effective prioritization of computing resources within the centre. This was especially important to satisfy the demands of design engineers to meet design cycle times. When design cycles started expanding from weeks to months, the additional processing demands and operational complexity exerted significant stress on the existing IT/CAD compute resources. This could require unplanned expansion to meet these new requirements and challenges—ultimately creating an unnecessary cycle of increased cost and complexity.

Director of Regional CAD S H Ang understood that a computing solution works best when it optimizes available resources, simplifies IT/CAD support and provides an effective return on investment. “Our designs are benchmarked against world class standards. That is why we need to look at various offerings across different platforms to find the best solution,” he said.

STMicroelectronics’ Asia Pacific Design Centre chose to employ Sun’s Grid computing cluster based on the AMD Opteron™ processor to meet the company’s stringent criteria in terms of scalability without compromising performance. The configuration deployed at STMicroelectronics’ Asia Pacific Design Centre consists of 32 two-way AMD Opteron processor-based Sun Fire™ V20z server compute nodes and one master node controller connected via a Gigabit Ethernet backbone to Sun storage boxes.

“We deployed the Grid computing solution because we needed assurance of backward compatibility of industry-standard 32-bit x86 applications. 32-bit applications and design files are still very much around, yet we also needed to plan for future 64-bit application requirements without any form of disruptive migrations,” Ang said.

This Grid computing solution provided the necessary resource allocation, enabling ST to start at a comfortable level with a scalable upgrade path within the same architecture. By doing this, utilization of computing resources was maximized within each investment period, providing the best value for the performance level required.

At its peak, the STMicrolectronics IT/CAD operation at the Asia Pacific Design Centre demands high memory and interconnect bandwidths to run complex designs concurrently. The AMD Opteron processor-based Sun Grid computing solution meets these requirements by removing performance bottlenecks typical of competing front-side bus architectures through the linking of processors, memory controller and I/O directly to the central processing unit.

“The Sun Grid system worked best with AMD Opteron processor-based servers. AMD’s HyperTransport™ technology is a bandwidth booster that provides high-speed links to accelerate I/O, improve scalability and reduce data access latency. As a result, systems can achieve up to 70 percent more data throughput compared to other architectures. This application solution was able to bridge the current compute farms to the new Grid computing resources,” said Tony Kam, account director, (Singapore) Sun Microsystems.

With an uninterrupted path between memory and CPU, and memory capacity that scales as CPUs are added to the system, larger Electronic Design Automation (EDA) designs can be analyzed and processed faster. The AMD Opteron processor’s integrated memory controller further boosts application performance by reducing memory latency. EDA users experience immediate benefits from this and from the interaction between the CPU and other components, such as the graphics subsystem, as they are optimized for the architecture.

Since deploying the solution, ST’s centre has reported more effective access to computing resources which results in a faster throughput. This gives ST an advantage in time-to-market for new products.

“One way of measuring the productivity of our jobs is completing the number of product verifications without compromising time spent on testing to improve product quality. We are now seeing as much as four times the improvement in speed with this new installation. That is definitely a major step forward,” Ang said.

Despite a shorter development cycle, product quality has also improved with an almost unlimited pool of validation resources within the Grid computing system. Additionally, the savings earned in EDA resource operation costs has directly lowered the product development costs.

Sun Microsystems also provided the Design Centre an application solution which bridged the new Grid computing resources and the old compute farm resources enabling the company to deploy both old and new computing resources efficiently and effectively.

Lastly, Ang commented on the level of service provided by AMD and Sun: “Working with responsive IT service providers is crucial to jump start the Compute Grid system to ensure a good Return on Net Assets (RONA). Sun and AMD are definitely great partners to work with,” he said.

“AMD and Sun Microsystems always understand our objectives and recommend appropriate solutions. The Sun grid, established with the AMD Opteron™ processor-based Sun Fire™ v20z servers offer both 32- and 64-bit computing capability and improves the throughput for our 64-bit applications. The high I/O bandwidth provided by this solution has also dramatically improved our overall performance.”—S H Ang, director of regional CAD, STMicroelectronics’ Asia Pacific Design Center

About AMD
Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) is a leading global provider of innovative microprocessor solutions for computing, communications and consumer electronics markets. Founded in 1969, AMD is dedicated to delivering superior computing solutions based on customer needs that empower users worldwide. For more information visit www.amd.com.