Physical software addresses sub-0.13-micron issues

Monterey Design Systems has released version 2.1 of its flagship Dolphin physical implementation system to support advanced process technologies of 0.13-micron and beyond.

Monterey Design Systems has released version 2.1 of its flagship Dolphin physical implementation system to support advanced process technologies of 0.13-micron and beyond.

The newest version extends the simultaneous optimisation capabilities of Dolphin to include all of the implementation, extraction, and analysis capabilities needed to transform a gate-level netlist into a manufacturing-ready tapeout for a multi-million-gate 0.13-micron chip.

The newly enhanced Dolphin 2.1 is built on the solid foundation of Dolphin 2.0, which is in production use by numerous semiconductor companies worldwide.

"The challenges presented to designers by 0.13-micron process technologies have proven to be much more difficult than originally expected", stated Tom Kozas, product marketing director at Monterey.

"In particular, the challenges of crosstalk noise and delay avoidance, accurate modelling of on-chip parasitic effects, handling of complex manufacturing rules, design for reliability issues, and management of power consumption have presented significant barriers to companies wishing to design with 0.13-micron technology".

Crosstalk induced noise and delay are much more prevalent in 0.13-micron designs than in 0.18-micron due to the increased crosscoupling capacitances and faster edge rates typically found in 0.13-micron designs.

Dolphin 2.1 extends the crosstalk analysis capabilities of Dolphin with new built-in crosstalk noise analysis that can detect and report potential functional failures.

Crosstalk avoidance is only achievable when extraction, analysis, and implementation are all tightly coupled in an integrated implementation environment as they are in Dolphin 2.1.

Previously, crosscoupling capacitance could only be analysed after detailed routing was completed.

Now Dolphin has been enhanced to avoid crosstalk problems by evaluating the waveforms of aggressor and victim nets that occupy common switching windows and applying statistical models to identify crosstalk-sensitive nets before they are routed.

These nets are automatically allocated special wire spacing rules during global and detailed routing in order to reduce or eliminate the effects of crosstalk delay and noise.

Highly accurate, albeit time-consuming, 3D field solvers are required to extract the parasitic information needed to correctly model and validate the timing and functionality of the chip.

Dolphin 2.1 has a built-in 2.5D extractor that gives results that are accurate to within 5% of a full 3D extractor on 95% of the nets on a large design.

It is fast enough to be run in real time during physical implementation, rather than as a post-process.

0.13-micron geometric rules are much more complex than those of prior generations, with obscure but critical rules such as minimum area, end-of-line, and length-dependent wire width and spacing being the norm.

The 2.1 version of the detailed router in Dolphin provides full support for the latest process rules including minimum area rules, antenna rules and end-of-line rules.

Electromigration, once only significant for clock wires, is now causing problems on signal wires as well.

This problem is becoming more acute because the decreased width of the wires, coupled with the increased currents due to faster signal transition rates, is resulting in big increases in current density in 0.13-micron technology compared with 0.18-micron designs.

With Dolphin 2.1 electromigration can now be detected and avoided on every wire in the design.

Dolphin 2.1 substitutes high-threshold cells for low-threshold cells whenever possible without harming timing.

On customer designs, Dolphin has shown a reduction in usage of low-threshold cells of up to 84%, which reduces leakage power and improves reliability and yield.

In 0.13-micron processes, the leakage power problem is just beginning to be felt controlling leakage power will become even more important as process technology continues to advance.

Dolphin 2.1 has been enhanced to address all of the challenges presented by the most advanced process technologies and design rules.

This has been achieved without compromising Dolphinûs capacity to handle up to five million gates flat.

In fact, Dolphin 2.1 is also 30% faster on average than the prior release.

"When we first started working with our customers on 0.13-micron designs, we found that our approach of simultaneously optimising the design to achieve all requirements was extremely well-suited for 0.13-micron processes", said Kozas.

"There are so many factors associated with timing, power, signal integrity, and even geometric rules that it would be impossible to resolve all the issues using a conventional 'construct-check-repair' flow.

In Dolphin 2.1 we have added the next level of functionality that is indispensable for designs using 0.13-micron process technology".

The production release of Dolphin 2.1 is available immediately.

It is supported on 32 and 64bit workstations from Sun and HP.

Pricing begins at $400,000 per year (US list price).

Current Dolphin customers will receive Dolphin 2.1 as part of their service agreement.

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