Sep 23 2013
Mentor Graphics Corp. today announced that it has completed enhancements to its digital tool set for TSMC’s 16nm FinFET manufacturing processes.
TSMC’s 16nm Reference Flow includes new capabilities for 16nm designs in the Olympus-SoC™ place and route system, and the Calibre® physical verification and design for manufacturing (DFM) platform. TSMC and Mentor completed V0.5 Design Rule Manual (DRM) and SPICE 16nm FinFET certification and will continue the certification toward V1.0.
“We’ve worked closely with Mentor Graphics to define new capabilities needed in the IC implementation flow to realize the benefits of 16nm FinFET technology,” said Suk Lee, senior director, Design Infrastructure Marketing Division at TSMC. “The new features build on the stable design-enabling environment that Mentor has delivered at prior nodes, which includes support for multi-patterning, low-power design, lithography checking, and design for test.”
The Mentor® Olympus-SoC place and route system has been enhanced to meet the TSMC 16nm design enablement and certification requirements. Innovative methodologies to support FinFET design include pattern density-aware floor planning for early metal fill density checks, MiM capacitor insertion for IR drop improvement, and support for high-resistance layer routing/optimization enabling better quality of results. In addition, the Calibre InRoute™ product allows Olympus-SoC customers to natively invoke Calibre DRC/DFM/DP signoff engines during design for more efficient and faster manufacturing closure.
16nm technology, and FinFET transistors in particular, create the need for more accurate device and interconnect parasitic extraction. To ensure the success of customer designs at 16nm, TSMC collaborated with Mentor on the Calibre xACT™ product enhancement via tool certification to provide high-accuracy, high-performance parasitic extraction.
The Calibre YieldEnhancer product provides new capabilities in its SmartFill facility to simplify fill rules for FinFETs, and to support a fill ECO flow, which makes it faster and easier to close a design while meeting advanced fill signoff requirements.
The Calibre RealTime integration platform adds support for automatic checking of 16nm voltage-dependent rule checks while editing layouts in Synopsys’ Laker® custom design environment, based on net voltages generated by SPICE simulation. The net voltages are automatically applied to the layout during layout creation and editing to enable accurate checking. The Calibre RealTime and Synopsys Laker products leverage the OpenAccess open interface to enable a fast and smooth user experience, resulting in the best custom layout in the least amount of time.
“Every IC process node presents new challenges—that’s been true since Gordon Moore formulated his famous law in the 1960s,” said Joseph Sawicki, vice president and general manager of the Design-to-Silicon division at Mentor Graphics. “But as we push closer to the limits of CMOS scaling, each node requires even more innovation and closer cooperation across the ecosystem to maintain the pace that keeps our industry healthy. Once again, Mentor and TSMC have stepped up to that challenge and delivered the needed technology right on time.”
Source: http://www.mentor.com/