Work for I-Cube Design Systems


I did the first two chips for I-Cube Design Systems, and later did more. I-Cube was founded to build non-blocking interconnect switches to connect FPGAs in the first PIE Design Systems logic emulation product. PIE was later absorbed by Quickturn Design Systems, and in the shuffle I-Cube found itself needing new customers.

The first part for PIE, the IQ160, proved to be quite useful for other types of reconfigurable machines, testers, and routers, though as a 1.2 micron chip with somewhat conservative design it was slower than desirable. A larger chip, the IQ320, and smaller, faster chips like the PSX64, soon followed.

Now that industry is discovering that Internet traffic is fractal in space and time, the simple, fast non-blocking switch has been shown to outperform "more clever" but complicated hierarchical blocking architectures. This has caused the I-Cube switches to be in great demand, and has caused the little company to grow like a weed - over 50 employees by Q3 1997.



Email: keithl(aT)kl-ic(doT)com

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last revision Jan 11, 2013