Product category:
Design and Development Software
News Release from: Softjin Technologies | Subject: NXCompare
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 29 May 2007
EDA tool stands test of comparison
Tool can compare any two layout and/or mask databases, which may be in different formats, have different hierarchies or come from different sources.
SoftJin has developed a fast and versatile geometrical comparison tool that can compare any two layout and/or mask databases, which may be in different formats, have different hierarchies or come from different sources The company has also upgraded its Nirmaan software development toolkit for developers of post-layout and DFM/DFY (design for manufacturing/design for yield) tools
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 21 Oct 2005 at 8.00am (UK)
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NXCompare offers fast and versatile layout and mask data comparison.
It is SoftJin's first end-user distributed processing application based on its Nirmaan software development toolkit.
Its features include: crossformat comparison support for multiple layout and mask data standards, including GDSII, Oasis, MEBES, Oasis.VSB and OpenAccess, with more to be added in future; distributed computing to achieve fast turnaround time; unlimited data handling capacity (can handle hundreds of GBs of GDSII data); and user defined tolerance to filter out nuisance differences.
Further reading
Software makes more of programmable platforms
The Programmable Synthesis Engine is a logic optimisation and mapping software product that is customisable for a variety of programmable platform architectures.
Compression algorithm cuts mask files down to size
MEBESzip is a software product that compresses mask data files in MEBES format by a factor of 5-15x and significantly reduces file sizes as well as data transfer times.
As compared with conventional DRC tools, NXCompare provides a better price and performance alternative as it has been specifically designed to deal with comparison of large, cross format databases.
Nirmaan 3.0 software development toolkit, the upgraded version of SoftJin's component software for post layout tool developers, has 10x performance improvement over previous version in terms of run-time speed-up, reduced memory utilisation and reduced output file sizes.
New features include support for developing distributed computing applications, native Input/Output interface for OpenAccess 2.2, robust all-angle geometric operations and support for text and properties.
Back-end IC designers and mask designers, who are dealing with layout and mask data, can use NXCompare for more efficient verification of their layout and mask data.
EDA companies can use NXCompare for regression testing of their post layout tools.
Nirmaan's users include in-house tool developers in semiconductor and EDA companies.
By using Nirmaan as a re-usable development platform, tool developers can develop a host of customised post layout and DFM tools, more than 2x faster and cheaper as compared with developing each tool from scratch.
NXCompare and Nirmaan 3.0 will be available in June.
Nirmaan 3.0 developer licences start at $100,000/year and depend on the subcomponents selected.
NXCompare pricing starts at $10,000/year and varies with the number of formats selected, and the number of nodes used for distributed computing.
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