EDA companies produce a wealth of content to help IC engineers get the best out of their tools through several means:
- Reference Manuals
- User Guides
- Tutorials
- Workshops
- Seminars
- Training Classes
- Phone Support
- AE visits
AEs and customer support often wish that EDA users would RTFM (Read The Fine Manual) to learn about new features, but with pressures to get the latest SoC taped out the users can default to using the familiar steps that worked before without really learning any of the new features now available. This dilema can be resolved if the new features are easily and quickly learned through the use of a video, especially for an interactive tool or process. With YouTube as the #2 most often-used method to search the web (behind #1 www.google.com), it makes sense that EDA companies would start to use YouTube to explain best practices.
Yesterday I met with Joseph Davis from Mentor Graphics where he explained how they have created 25 videos on YouTube specifically for IC engineers that want to get the best results out of DRC, LVS and Extraction with the Calibre tools.
Joseph Davis, Mentor Graphics
What’s Available
Mentor has created a YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/ICNanometerDesign, and here are the Calibre topics that can improve your efficiency with just a few minutes of time investment:
How to display RVE Highlight Layers as a Rulecheck in Calibre DESIGNrev
How to change the Calibre Interactive default settings
How to run Calibre in Cadence Virtuoso using a single mouse-click
How to better visualize DRC errors and have easier access to design documents
How to instantly open a partial GDS or Oasis database in DESIGNrev
- How to set hotkeys in Calibre DESIGNrev
- How to import on-disk IP with Calibre Interactive™
- How to document, review & share Calibre DRC errors & waivers between Designers and Foundries
- How to display Rulecheck name as RVE highlight layer name in Calibre DESIGNrev
- How to find information about the layout without opening the layout using Calibre DESIGNrev
- Finding and running Tcl scripts to expland DESIGNrev functions
- How to use Calibre RealTime in the custom-design environment
- How to instantly open a partial GDS or Oasis database in DESIGNrev
- How to automate Calibre interface configurations in Synopsys IC Compiler
- How to Generate XOR rules for GDS and Oasis input databases
- How to select specific rule checks for a Calibre DRC run
- How to save portion of layout to GDS or OASIS
- How to find cell-references using DESIGNrev
- How to turn DESIGNrev command-line script into a GUI-menu based Macro
- How to cross-probe nets in the design environment using Calibre RVE
- How to edit in place from top-level in Calibre DESIGNrev
- How to automatically replace LEF abstracts with GDS IP
- How to avoid cell name conflicts in chip assembly with automated cellname prefix/suffix
- How to debug non-texted shorts using Calibre RVE
- How to waive DRC results using Calibre RVE
Summary
You can in a few minutes become more proficient in your DRC, LVS and extraction tool flows by watching a YouTube video. The end result is that you save hours to days of effort. Expect to see about one new video per week on this YouTube channel focused on Calibre. Who knows, maybe you’ll want to create your own YouTube videos and add your own content to this channel.
lang: en_US
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