Last week I talked with two experts at Mentor about the challenges of getting IC designs into the 32nm/28nm node on the Common Platform (IBM, GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Samsung). Global Foundries issued a press release talking about how the four major EDA companies have worked together to qualify EDA tools for this node.
Sudhakar Jilla,… Read More
Computational Lithography, Scaling’s Best Friend
By Joseph Sawicki, Vice President & General Manager, Design to Silicon Division
It is one of the more amazing stories in the continued march of Moore’s Law over the past four nodes. Previously scaling was enabled solely though changes in the physical domain, whether through decreasing the wavelength of light, increasing … Read More
Mentor Company History
A venture capitalist offered the advice, “Startup investors are attracted by good people making a good product for a growing market.” That wisdom, as much as any served as the foundation for the company Mentor Graphics would become.… Read More
What Do You Mean by Mandatory?
When TSMC and Mentor Graphics held a joint seminar for mutual customers to go over new DFM requirements at 45/40 nm, two customers basically asked the same question, “What do you mean by mandatory?” Of course, TSMC wasn’t going to stand over them and say, “Mandatory means mandatory, what part of mandatory don’t you understand?” … Read More
What Do You Mean by Mandatory?
When TSMC and Mentor Graphics held a joint seminar for mutual customers to go over new DFM requirements at 45/40 nm, two customers basically asked the same question, “What do you mean by mandatory?” Of course, TSMC wasn’t going to stand over them and say, “Mandatory means mandatory, what part of mandatory don’t you understand?” … Read More
How to Multi-Voltage IC Design in 10 Easy Steps
What I’m really describing here is an over-simplified backend flow for physical design of low power ICs with multiple voltage domains. If you haven’t ventured into this territory yet, this will hopefully give you some food for thought. Here are the basic steps:… Read More
Clocks Will Be Clocks
Clock designers are an enigma. Clock designers in general are die hard Star Wars fans, own vintage Porsches that leak oil by the gallon, usually have lava lamps in their offices/cubicles, wear fancy leather jackets in the peak of summer, and have like-minded clock designers as best lunch buddies. … Read More
Why Only MV When You Can MC, MM & MV?
Resistance is futile. I recently caved and switched to an iPhone after having been a loyal Google phone user for more than year. Apart from the coolness factor, my main motivation was corporate mail support that was absent in Gphone, plus the fact that I got the iPhone for free when my wife upgraded hers. The difference is day and night… Read More
How to Multi-Voltage IC Design in 10 Easy Steps
What I’m really describing here is an over-simplified backend flow for physical design of low power ICs with multiple voltage domains. If you haven’t ventured into this territory yet, this will hopefully give you some food for thought. Here are the basic steps:… Read More
So, Why Not Just Write Better Rules?
In my submission about TSMC making some DFM analysis steps mandatory at 45nm (see “TSMC’s DFM Announcement”), I ended with a question about why the foundries can’t just write better design rules (and rule decks) to make sure all designs yield well. Here’s my take on this complicated question.… Read More