Synopsys claims to reduce physical signoff to just hours
Design rule checking (DRC) technology in the IC Validator NXT physical verification tool from Synopsys, delivers five times faster DRC performance for SoC integration, claims the company.
It enables design teams to reduce the physical signoff cycle by a factor of two for advanced technology nodes, adds Synopsys. IC Validator NXT uses massively parallel distributed processing architecture and scalability to 2000+ CPUs for full-chip physical signoff within hours.
The Explorer DRC technology offers five times faster runtime with five times fewer CPUs and order-of-magnitude debugging speed-up with heatmap for DRC during chip integration. The Live DRC technology with Custom Compiler delivers on-the-fly DRC feedback within seconds and enables an interactive design-and-verify flow for design teams to accelerate time to market.
The tool is in response to designers challenges around the introduction of new processes and technology nodes, explains Dan Page, vice president, Design Group, at Synopsys. “As designers adopt 7nm and newer technology nodes, physical verification closure within schedule is becoming a major challenge, and tapeout delays can have a significant impact on our customers’ product lifetime revenue and profitability,” he said. “Our new IC Validator NXT technology innovations deliver breakthrough performance scalability and visualisation, and provide designers with the fastest path to production silicon.”
IC Validator, a component of Synopsys’ Fusion Design Platform, is a scalable physical verification tool suite including DRC, layout versus schematic (LVS), programmable electrical rule checks (PERC), dummy metal fill, and design-for-manufacturabilty (DFM) enhancement capabilities. IC Validator is architected for high performance and scalability that maximises mainstream hardware, using smart memory-aware load scheduling and balancing technologies. It uses both multi-threading and distributed processing over multiple machines to provide scalability that extends to over 2,000 CPUs.
Synopsys is the Silicon to Software partner for innovative companies developing the electronic products and software applications. It is the world’s 15th largest software company, and specialises in electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor IP, software security and quality solutions for a customer base of SoC designers and software developers.
