( DAC'17 Item 7 ) ------------------------------------------------- [04/06/18]
Subject: Helic Exalto gets #7 Best of 2017; because inductance counts at 7nm
DON'T FORGET INDUCTANCE!: One conceptually "new" tool in EDA is actually an
extention on an existing idea. At big fat happy nodes like 28nm, doing
crosstalk analysis using simple RC paracitics worked nicely. But now at 7nm
it's crucial that you add inductance (RLC) to your EM crosstalk analysis.
Helic Exalto does 3D electro-magnetic (EM) crosstalk analysis and
signoff. Has killer capacity/speed/accuracy. 12 Ghz chip with EM
coupling through PWR/GND. 2.8mm X 700u, with AP, M12-M7. Extracted
in 36 hours on 20 cores. Another SOC with EM crosstalk between multi
VCOs. Modeled seal-ring & bump pads necessary to analyze 20x15mm from
AP+M12 to M6. Full RLCK extraction in 24 hours w 350GB on 40 cores.
Rivals HFSS, Quantus. Users Huawei, NXP, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm.
(booth 341) Ask Yorgos Koutsoyiannopoulos. Freebies: squeeze ball
- from "My Cheesy Must See List for DAC 2017"
From my simple understanding, Helic is like PrimeTime-SI and CLK-DA, but by
adding inductance, Helic is far more accurate than both of them at 7nm.
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BLAST FROM THE PAST: One of the fun facts about Helic is that one of its
investors is an EDA veteran from the olde DFM wars and C/C++ synthesis wars.
He's the former CEO of both Blaze DFM and Forte Design, Jacob Jacobsson.
Jacob made a ton of money off of Blaze DFM. Not so much of off Forte. He's
been an executive at Cadence, Xilinx, and the olde Daisy Systems. Beyond
Helic's board, he's been on the Actel, Runtime, and RF Micron boards; plus
a bunch of other start-ups. ("Whoa! This Swedish Jacob guy is connected!")
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HELIC DOING WELL: In the extraction game, Helic easily dominated in the user
survey comments. There was passing minor mention of StarRC, Calibre QRC,
and Teklatech -- but Helic stole the show as far as users were concerned.
Helic comments: ################################ 1,057 user words
Teklatech comments: # 38 user words
StarRC comments: # 29 user words
Calbre QRC comments: # 17 user words
And the Helic customer base that I know of is impressive.
On the tech side, Helic has 3 tools: Exalto, VeloceRF, and RaptorX. Their
Exalto RLCK extractor is the hot seller because of the pain felt at 7nm.
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QUESTION ASKED:
Q: "What were the 3 or 4 most INTERESTING specific EDA tools
you've seen this year? WHY did they interest you?"
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Helic Exalto
We think Helic's Exalto is currently the best extractor on the market
for analyzing coupling and crosstalk in large scale SoCs. It's RLCK
extraction is our preferred method to capture coupling effects and
crosstalk on an IC. Traditional RC extractors like Calibre QRC or
StarRC are often limited by the size of the netlist. Coupling done
with the extra L's (inductive components) and k's (magnetic coupling
factors), makes doing StarRC/Calibre QRC top level RLCK extraction
impossible. They don't have the capacity.
Helic's Exalto mitigates this by using a proprietary algorithm to scale
down these large-sized netlists; while still maintaining enough
accuracy in RLCK extraction.
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Helic Exalto
Helic Exalto's claim to fame is system level extraction that includes
inductive coupling.
The idea itself is not new. We had talked about it 10-15 years ago; it
was going to be the next new thing, but it never caught on because of
the shrinking transistor distance on a planar structure. But then we
couldn't pack more planar transistors into a die anymore.
Today however, at 7nm we have 3D transistors, and they are faster while
the distance between transistors is not decreasing like prior process
nodes.
So inductive coupling is now much more of a factor:
- The edge rate is faster
- The transistors are not getting closer
It matters now -- time to take inductive coupling seriously.
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Easy -- Helic Exalto is #1 for us this year.
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We like how Exalto trims our nets for RLCK extraction yet it keeps
accuracy. If you can, you should ask Yorgos to explain it to you.
It's quite clever.
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Helic Exalto
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Exalto extraction
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Helic RLCK
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Biggest lie? StarRC is going to have RLCK extraction at the speeds
that Exalto has now.
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Helic VeloceRF
If you are an RF designer, to generate custom electromagnetics devices
-- such as inductors and transformers -- to make your circuit better,
you need an electromagnetic simulator, preferably one that interfaces
with Cadence Analog Artist.
We use VeloceRF to synthesize common electromagnetics devices, such as
inductors and transformers, with several interesting parameterized
cells.
- We tell VeloceRF what we want, for example inductance and
at a certain frequency and a range for silicon area.
- VeloceRF then extracts 100's or 1000's of possible structures,
from which creates a table of 10's of relevant structures,
which can be sorted by silicon area or Q, etc.
- From this table you can pick the structure(s) for which you
want a complete model.
In addition to generating inductors, VeloceRF can synthesize
transformers to fit an impedance match condition, or just self and
mutual inductance. Again, generating a table of 10's of relevant
structures.
Comparable EM simulation tools that are considerably slower would make
generating a table of this size infeasible.
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Helic VeloceRF
I've been a Helic user for over a decade. Veloce RF allows you to
create different passives, such as inductors, transformers, and t/coils.
You can synthesize them, and look at the performance across frequency
and other conditions.
It's extremely fast, so you can do several iterations of the design
until you get a perfect design.
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Helic RaptorX
The EM simulator at the core of VeloceRF is their RaptorX extraction
tool.
The difference between RaptorX and Ansys HFSS is the speed at which a
structure can be simulated. RaptorX can generate a model for arbitrary
structures with very high port counts. Which if done right, has the
potential to expose issues in the development phase of chip design.
RaptorX is great for simulating any arbitrary shape:
- Inductors by themselves
- Inductors near other inductors
- Inductors near supply/ or signal lines
- Even supply and or signal lines by themselves, etc.
RaptorX is used for post tape-out debugging.
For example, if you measure an RF coupling issue in the lab, then one
will need to go back and debug the physical layout.
The ability to include a high number of ports accurately in a EM model
will allow you to include more of the suspected metal lines that might
have resulted in the coupling witnessed in the lab.
In general, the more that is modeled, the higher the likelihood of
seeing the issue in simulation.
This makes RaptorX the go to debugging tool.
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Helic RaptorX
For certain designs, you must use electromagnetic software. RaptorX
allows you to take any design you have, and create a high frequency
model to see how it performs.
In my experience, RaptorX is very user friendly.
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Helic RaptorX
I've worked with the Helic tools suite and set it up for multiple
technologies and metal stacks. Helic's RaptorX is a 3D RLC extractor
for high frequency/RF modeling of wires.
- Normally wires can interfere with your design, but for
high-speed designs, you can model it to use them to your
advantage.
- RaptorX helps you understand the relevant factors when you a
take a low-speed wire and turn the transformers into inductors
and capacitors.
- The tool takes a cross section with wires going through it,
and gives a simulatable answer of how it will work.
RaptorX is an awesome tool for taking small black boxes and simulating
them.
I'd like them to be able to take it a step further and span between two
chips, as that is something we must address as we get into 3D packaging.
The problem with doing 3D integration is that chips mounted on
substrates are like chips on tops of chips, where one chip is upside
down, and must still be extracted and read.
You end up with multiple sources and want one tool to load it all in.
If it's from different fabs, you need secure files from the different
sources. e.g. when TSMC delivers an encrypted file of the
cross-sectional data to run the tool. I can take the files, compile
them into a usable form, and then run the tool, but I can't do it for
stacks. TSMC needs to maintain their IP rights but we want to be able
to model it. It's more of a legal issue than a mechanical one.
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We looked at both Helic and Teklatech. We bought Helic.
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I know we use Helic Exalto for RLCK. Only looked at Teklatech.
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Maybe Helic or Teklatech? We're just looking at them now.
My RF guys understand Helic better than Teklatech.
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