Synthesis and fabrication, along with post fab simulation and test vector generation would consume about one month. Designing and producing such a chip in only seven months would not be an easy task. The chip, Matisse, would consist of an MPEG2 video decoder block and a multi-format converter block. The display clock would run at about 74 MHz. The device's economical plastic package limited power consumption to under 2 W. Major Challenges Park and his team knew that to meet the aggressive seven-month schedule, they would have to concentrate on shortening the simulation time in the design cycle.
Video decoders require very large simulation vectors to produce a real image.
Because there are many variations in video images such as image size, bit rate, and motion type, the team had to simulate all of types of images to avoid functional bugs. Obviously, this was a very time-consuming job. That was clearly unacceptable. Though they were faced with time-consuming simulation runs, Park and his team knew they couldn't skimp on that part of the design cycle. After all, sending a flawed design to the fab would be more expensive than exhaustive simulation runs.