Silicon design is a major focus of the Creative Advanced Technology Center. We have a long history of successful designs in a wide variety of applications. We stay at the cutting edge of technology and focus on clean, well-structured designs, pushing the silicon harder and faster to reach state-of-the-art performance levels and functionality.

With our history and significant IP portfolio in audio, we have a unique ability to architect our own complete proprietary solutions for audio applications, including audio DSP architecture and design. Particular challenges include verification of audio processing functionality in a pre-silicon design environment - to this end we make significant use of emulation to verify huge amounts of audio data before committing to silicon.

Silicon design for graphics is one of the most challenging fields in VLSI design today. Graphics chips rival CPUs in chip complexities, gate counts and speeds, and technological innovation happens at an astounding pace. Multi-million gate designs at very high speeds are standard for graphics these days, and complexity management is a major component of a successful graphics program. Advanced back-end methodologies are crucial to achieving cost-effective silicon at these huge gate counts, and are the only way to meet performance goals.

Connectivity is becoming a more and more important part of today's technology, and Creative is working on many exciting programs in this area, including advanced P1394 (FireWire) controllers and Bluetooth, utilizing a combination of third-party IP and proprietary design. System-on-a-chip solutions and fast integration are key in these technologies.

The following pages discuss some of the approaches and methodologies we use in each of these fields.