Standard cell library developers are faced with a daunting task when it is time to create a library for a new process node. Porting an existing library can be a big help, but even then, manual modifications to 800 or more cells is still required. Each of those cells has many geometric elements are that affected by new design rules. All… Read More
The venue
Despite of being held at the new three-story Moscone West building, this year 55th DAC in San Francisco bore many similarities as compared with last year’s. Similar booth decors and floorplan positioning of the big two, Synopsys and Cadence, which were across of each other and right next to the first floor entrance –although… Read More
It was 1988 when I got into SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis)while I was characterizing a 1.5 μm Standard cell library developed by students at my Alma-Mata Furtwangen University in Germany. My professor Dr. Nielinger was not only my advisor he also wrote the first SPICE bible in German language.… Read More
Traditional, rule based, RC extractors rely on a substantial base of assumptions, which are increasingly proving unreliable. Having accurate RC extraction results for parasitic R’s and C’s is extremely important for ensuring proper circuit operation and for optimizing performance and power. Advanced process nodes are making… Read More
Designers spend a lot of time looking at their layouts in 2D. This is done naturally because viewing in 2D is faster and simpler than in 3D. It helps that humans are good at extrapolating from 2D to 3D. Analysis software, such as extraction software also spend a lot of time looking at layouts in 2D. While this is fine for approximate results,… Read More
Variation analysis continues to be increasingly important as process technology moves to more advanced nodes. It comes as no surprise that tool development in this area has been vigorous and aggressive. New higher reliability IC applications, larger memory sizes and much higher production volumes require sophisticated yield… Read More
When I started dabbling in hardware again for fun using Arduinos about five years ago, it had been a long time since I had played with microprocessor chips. The epiphany for me was seeing how easy it was to load programs onto the onboard flash on something like an Atmel AVR using the SPI interface. My previous experience decades early… Read More
Our smart phone driven semiconductor economy consumes a lot of IP blocks to enable quick product development cycles, often annually updating with new models to choose from. So where do you find all of the best semiconductor IP, verification IP and embedded software? Well, one place is at the 2nd annual REUSE conference, scheduled… Read More
In college I took courses in physics, calculus, chemistry and electronics on my way to earn a BSEE degree, then did an 8 year stint as a circuit designer, working at the transistor level and interacting with fab and test engineers. My next adventure was working at EDA companies in a variety of roles. As a circuit designer I knew that … Read More
My educational background is Electrical Engineering and I’ve learned a lot since starting in the industry back in 1978 while working on bipolar, NMOS and CMOS technology, designing DRAM, data controller and GPU devices. I continue to learn about the semiconductor industry through daily reading and attending trade shows… Read More
