( DAC 99 Item 8 ) ----------------------------------------------- [6/25/99]
LET'S GET PHYSICAL: OK, using the title of that old Olivia Newton-John
song is a cheesy intro to user opinions about IC layout, RC extraction,
physical verification, "Optical Proximity Correction" (whatever *that*
is), noise, and delay calculation tools. Can *you* do better???
"RC Extraction and Analysis:
There were a bunch of people with RC extraction and timing analysis
products at the show including as leaders Simplex, Arcadia, Frequency
Technology, Cadence, Avant!, Mentor. The two best technical products
at the show were Star from Avant! and 'Fire & Ice' QX from Simplex.
( http://www.simplex.com )
The Avant! tools is fairly integrated with their place and route tool
and as a result does not have a very good GUI for doing custom product
flows and the resulting timing and IR drop analysis. Simplex's
solution is a drop into to the Cadence Silicon Ensemble P&R flow, and
increase the speed of their product to now time efficiently handle
>2M device databases. They have also enhanced their analysis tools
and are now the leader in post extraction RC analysis. Mentor is
focusing on DRC/LVS strategies this year and their xCalibre product
did not get any earthshattering improvements. It is still in the top
tier of extraction tools, but its current packaging w/ a reducer tool
and capacitance analysis tool (for runset generation) is still not up
to speed for production use -- expect another year for these guys to
pull the product together." ( http://www.avanticorp.com )
- an anon engineer
|
|
