QuickCap for IC Extraction at DAC 2011

Intro
John and Ralph from Magma gave me an update on QuickCap at DAC on Monday afternoon in their demo suite.

Notes
John Schritz – Sr AE
Ralph Iverson, Ph. D. (wrote QuickCap)

John Schritz
– Digital Signoff, extraction
– QCP: 2.5D RC for full ASIC designs
– QuickCAP NX: 3D field solver
– QCP:

Demo – 1.5 million instance design, 1.59 million nets, fully P&R, three libraries
– QCP: Gate Level (Star RC competitor)
– QuickCapNX: 3D field solver (Raphael competitor)
– QCP TX: Transistor Level (RC XT competitor)
– QCP
o 10X faster than Star RC
o 20X faster with multi-corner extraction
o Accuracy: +-2% of QuickCap NX
o TSMC qualified at 28nm
o Inputs: LEF, DEF, GDS II
o Scaling: can add multiple corners using only 20% run time, can be distributed across more boxes
o Capacity: 50M instance designs, memory efficiency
o Accuracy (vs Star RC)
o Example: TSMC 40nm, 38K nets
o 1 corner at 5 hrs, 12 corners at 8.4 hours (27X faster than Star RC), using 3.3GHZ CPU, 148GB and 12 CPUs
o One license per four cores (after that add a multi-core to add up to 32 cores)
o 16 Synopsys licenses for a runtime of 60 minutes, vs 2 licenses in 34 minutes
o ½ the run time, ¾ the HW, 1/8 the licenses (compared to Synopsys with 80% market share)
o 3D on demand (add QuickCap NX), name the nets you want best accuracy on
– Tekton – a STA tool
o Reads SPEFS
o Fast STA in minutes
o Concurrent MM/MC
o Accurate with SPICE integration
– Old flow
o Implement, output a GDS II
o Extract, output SPEF
o STA
– New Flow
o Implement
o QCP and Tekton
– QuickCap NX: Industry Golden 3D Field Solver
o Same run time independent on
o Three methods:
 Finite Element (Slowest)
 Boundary Integral (Slow, what Mentor 3D XACT uses)
 QuickCap (Fastest)
o Field-solver accuracy (within 1% of Silicon)
o Good for library characterization, custom, analog
o Flow Inputs: ITF or iRCS from foundary, GDS II layout
o Industry standard solver at IDMs, Foundries
o Edge effects
o Qualified by TSMC
– QCP TX – transistor level extraction
o Millions of transistor capacity
o To be released in 6 months
o For: Custom design, memory, AMS
o CCI – Calibre Connectivity Interface, stress parameters, well proximity
– QCP Demo
o 18 million nets extracted per hour on 8 threads

Summary
Star RC (Synopsys) has plenty of competition from Magma, Mentor and Cadence for IC extraction. I also learned more about 3D Field Solvers on Tuesday at the Pavilion Panel session.