Engines aid bespoke ECAD development

RDE engines increase productivity for CAD developers and speed up CAD design tool development.

Silicon Navigator has developed three new software engines for its RDE Framework (RDE)- Skill compatible PCell Editor, RTL Power Analysis and Schematic Editor.

The engines augment RDE's existing engines for RTL processing, static timing analysis, layout editing, mask processing, data translation and graphic display.

The RDE engines increase productivity for CAD developers and speed up CAD design tool development by allowing CAD developers to spend time on solving design problems rather than building basic functionality.

Extensions facilitate the development of comprehensive EDA solutions on a unified standards-based environment "We continue to aggressively pursue our business model of licensing design components based on the OpenAccess database", said George Janac, CEO.

"Our new engines are in answer to CAD developers' requests for broader flow coverage and better OpenAccess integration so Internal CAD solutions can cover new and unmet chip design needs".

"Our engines represent a new EDA licensing paradigm of supplying component-based software that supports tool development and integration within large and small corporations", added Janac.

"EDA is ripe for a change to standards-based component software.

Each process generation presents unique not easily addressed with one-size-fits-all solutions The Schematic Editor engine allows designers to create or edit existing schematics stored in the OpenAccess database, The PCell engine and editor offers an interface for access to PCells coded in Skill in the OpenAccess database.

The RTL power analysis engine accepts RTL as input and computes leakage, dynamic and switching power by elaborating the RTL and propagating the activity.

RTL and netlist support enables power to be tracked early in a design project and quickly optimised.

RDE environment supports designs with millions of instances in a fraction of the time of other systems.

The RDE Framework includes tools that CAD developers can use to speed the adoption of the OpenAccess database and customise a design cockpit.

It offers a desktop and graphical user interfaces (GUIs), editor, viewers and APIs.

The RDE Framework supports APIs with standard languages such as TCL, Python, C++ with access data structures, controls and results.

It can be used stand-alone or in conjunction with other OpenAccess environments.

Silicon Navigator provides EDA format translators along with interfaces to flows based on other commercial tools.

RDE is especially attractive to CAD groups at semiconductor companies or IDMs where a make versus buy tool decision is critical to optimising internal development resources and time.

RDE provides a complete development system so the CAD developers can focus on high value solutions rather than basic functionality.

Its users include CAD developers at semiconductor companies and EDA tool developers at emerging companies RDE engines are all available now.

The price for a RDE Framework development licence starts at US $50,000.

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