Oct. 13, 2009 (Business Wire) -- Rapid Bridge, an innovator in advanced semiconductor design and development processes, announced today that its LiquidSoC™ has been selected by Applied Micro Circuits Corporation (NASDAQ: AMCC) for a multi-platform, advanced nanometer system-on-chip (SoC) engagement.

LiquidSoC – A Systems Approach to Design

Rapid Bridge’s Liquid platforms provide an entirely new approach to IC development that inherently improves the performance of the SoC building blocks. Developed from the ground up, Rapid Bridge’s SoC platforms, or Liquid platforms, have been designed to work together seamlessly through Rapid Bridge’s patented Global Shared Resources Architecture. This Global Shared Resources Architecture differentiates Rapid Bridge’s solution by combining the infrastructure requirements of individual circuits into a shared resource system reducing the inefficiencies associated with complex chip designs.

“In the past, AppliedMicro chose to source solutions from multiple vendors, which added considerable development time and integration risk,” said Babak Mansoorian, corporate IP manager at Applied Micro. “Rapid Bridge offers us a proven alternative, where all subsystems, IOs and PHYs, work together as a system lowering both risk and time-to-market.”

Rapid Bridge’s chip-level approach reduces area, power, IP integration risk, development time and time-to-market – improving the ability of the semiconductor industry to innovate.

Flexibility and Performance

Rapid Bridge’s Liquid platforms provide meaningful advantages in power, area and size and have the added benefit of metal configurability. The configurable Liquid platforms enable designers to make full logic changes using metal masks only – reducing the cycle time and costs associated with chip spins, feature creep and derivative products.

“At AppliedMicro, we took a long term view of where the industry was heading and our needs in the face of increasing complexity and cost. In the end, we valued re-configurability, performance and, of course, total cost,” said Bob Gargus, CFO of AppliedMicro. “Rapid Bridge’s unique approach delivers a superior advanced nanometer SoC platform with reduced cost, power and time-to-market.”

The system level advantages of Rapid Bridge’s Liquid platforms coupled with its metal programmability provide a matchless combination of flexibility and performance to enable the next-generation of IC designs.

““We are delighted to work with AppliedMicro to deliver their next generation of products and look forward to a long term relationship,” said Massih Tayebi, CEO of Rapid Bridge. “Our goal at Rapid Bridge is to unleash innovations at advanced nanometers by lowering the barriers of entry.