Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: Mentor Graphics UK
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 01 March 2001
Data exchange smooths subwavelength IC
design
Mentor Graphics and Prolific are to ensure effective data exchange between Mentor's Calibre physical verification and RET tools and the ProGenesis netlist-to-layout applications.
Mentor Graphics and Prolific are to ensure effective data exchange between Mentor's Calibre physical verification and resolution enhancement technology (RET) tools and the Prolific ProGenesis netlist-to-layout applications This partnership provides a crucial next step for the subwavelength IC design flow
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 21 Feb 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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Broad use of RET is inevitable.
With this in mind, changes must be made to the way standard cell libraries, are created.
The logical next step for library automation tools is to generate cells that are not only, for example, "area-optimised", but also "RET-compliant".
This is simply a new set of special generator rules derived from Calibre's subwavelength printability simulations that provide information on extending design rules, and enable DRC variances to be approved with more confidence.
Thus, such cell library generator tools hold great opportunity for enhancing yield for the 130 and 100nm generations and beyond, by enabling greater degrees of freedom for full-chip RET tools, within the context of crucial IC design goals.
Precorrecting cells prior to placement in a full-chip context is a fundamentally flawed idea as interactions between adjacent cells are ignored.
Instead, the optimal point of RET insertion is squarely in the design flow at physical verification.
Mentor Graphics has already integrated full-chip RET into the design verification stage, where standard cell placements are finalised, thus enabling distortions caused by full-chip cell interactions to be accurately corrected.
By making Prolific generated cells RET-compliant, IC designers can make optimal tradeoffs intelligently during the design flow, without committing to RET application too early.
"Prolific and Mentor Graphics can offer joint customers an optimised flow for verified, manufacturable, RET-compliant cells.
This flow lets designers optimise cell attributes, and ultimately, build smaller and faster chips", said Joseph Sawicki, general manager of the Calibre business unit of Mentor Graphics Corporation.
"Prolific is the revenue leader and technology leader in the library generation market, and we see natural synergy in collaborating on the layout-to-silicon flow".
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