( ESNUG 377 Item 3 ) -------------------------------------------- [09/19/01]
Subject: ( ESNUG 376 #8 ) Cooley Humbled By Magma's 667 K Instance Blocks
> I noted that's a VERY BIG CLAIM because everyone else is struggling with
> hierarchical flows BECAUSE Magma/PhysOpt/PKS can only do 100K to 360K
> blocks. (Even Magma itself announced a hierarchical tool because of this
> problem!) Now if Magma can do 4 million gates flat, as their VP says,
> THAT'S NEWS. Over the past 9 days I've been phoning and e-mailing the
> Magma people to get a user to confirm that they really can do 3-4 million
> gates FLAT. Magma keeps replying the 3Dlabs people will confirm this,
> but so far, I've received nothing whatsoever from any Magma user on
> anything. After 9 days, I'm no longer holding my breath here.
>
> - John Cooley
From: "Paul Pontin" <Paul.Pontin@3dlabs.com>
John,
I just had to reply to this one!
This is the data we gave your for your tapeout survey:
8 M gates, 2.5 M instances, 30 M transistors
What we did not tell you was that the chip consisted of 4 flat blocks, held
together by a top level. The block sizes were:
Block 1: 3.1 M gates, 667 K instance count, 58 macros, 3000 I/O's
Block 2: 2.3 M gates, 600 K instance count, 98 macros, 6000 I/O's
Block 3: 1.9 M gates, 200 K instance count, 32 macros, 4000 I/O's
Block 4: 700 K gates, 505 K instance count, 88 macros, 500 I/O's
The only layout tool used was BlastFusion. (Yes, it even did the top level.
We were the ones working with Magma to develop the hierarchical flow.) One
of the main reasons we use BlastFusion is because of the large block sizes
it can handle.
BlastFusion is a major competive advantage to us in the eternal struggle to
lay out these massive chips. I do not know of another tool that could have
handled this design in 4 blocks... do you?
- Paul Pontin
3Dlabs Egham, Surrey, UK
[ Editor's Note: Wow. I got put in my place there. On my scorecard for
max block sizes (counted as placeable instances), Magma's 667 K is 2X
Cadence PKS' 360 K and 3X Synopsys PhysOpt's 250 K. Guess it's just my
day to eat some humble pie here, folks. I was wrong. Oops. - John ]
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