Library software to organise ST's 40nm cells

The STMicroelectronics Data Storage Division will use Variety LX to characterise a commercial cell library augmented with its custom cells for use at 40nm.

STMicroelectronics' Data Storage Division has adopted Variety LX from Altos Design Automation for corner and statistical cell characterisation.

ST will use Variety LX to characterise a commercial cell library augmented with its custom cells for use at 40nm.

The characterised views will be used for both corner based and statistical timing analysis.

According to Aldo Cometti, Director of Design at STMicroelectronics: "Our designs must achieve gigahertz performance within a strict power budget so it's imperative that ST's Data Storage Division uses advanced process technology, innovative circuit design solutions and deploy the latest statistical design methodologies".

Cometti continued: "We selected Variety LX because it can very quickly and easily characterise standard cells library augmented with our special cells, for use with both statistical and nonstatistical design flows".

Jim McCanny, Altos CEO and founder said: "Fast, easy-to-use library characterisation enables designer to better balance the tradeoffs between timing and power closure via customisation of the characterisation setup".

McCanny continued: "Variety LX will let STMicroelectronics create library views tuned to its specific needs and will enable the productivity and power saving benefits that come from using statistical timing analysis".

Variety LX is an ultrafast library creator that generates electrical models in Liberty, Verilog, Vital and IBIS formats.

Variety LX supports all the latest models for timing, noise and power such as CCS (composite current source) and ECSM (effective current source models) including the statistical ECSM and CCS variation extensions required to support statistical static timing analysis (SSTA).

Variety LX also supports ultra low power and high speed design styles that include power gating cells, state retention registers, level shifters, pulse clocking and CML.

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