Date: 01/06/2011

Magma's Titan, FineSim and Talus supports TSMC's latest reference flows at 28-nm

Magma Design Automation has announced TSMC has validated the Titan Mixed-Signal Design Platform and FineSim SPICE and FineSim Pro circuit simulation products for inclusion in TSMC's Analog/Mixed-Signal (AMS) Reference Flow 2.0. The TSMC AMS Reference Flow 2.0 targets its most advanced 28-nanometer (nm) process technology and includes a comprehensive design kit and new advanced custom design methodologies. Magma's Titan Mixed-Signal Design Platform and FineSim circuit simulator have been applied to support the enhanced flow.

Titan provides a Layout-Dependent-Effects (LDE)-aware flow that allows users to account for these effects during schematic design, and performs custom wire load emulation allowing users to include parasitic effects early in the circuit design and simulation flow. Titan also provides a parasitic wrapper that enables schematic engineering change order (ECO) emulation with parasitic and LDE parameters, allowing users to make schematic changes and factor in LPE and RC effects.

FineSim SPICE and FineSim Pro work with Titan to enable SPICE-level simulation and post-layout simulation with extracted parasitics. FineSim SPICE is a SPICE-level simulation analysis tool that incorporates transistor-level simulation analysis capabilities for mixed-signal and analog designs. Magma claims FineSim Pro is the industry's first fast SPICE circuit simulator that supports multi-CPU simulations.

"Customers always seek better ways to achieve superior results in advanced technologies," said Anirudh Devgan, general manager of Magma's Custom Design Business Unit. "By working with TSMC and providing advanced capabilities, faster throughput, higher levels of automation and allowing analog design reuse, Magma enables customers to develop highly differentiated products more cost effectively."

"TSMC's 28-nm process technology enables customers to improve timing, area and power on their designs, and achieving silicon success requires a complete design ecosystem that includes leading-edge analog and circuit simulation tools," said Suk Lee, director of Design Infrastructure Marketing at TSMC. "By collaborating with Magma to include Titan and FineSim for the AMS Reference Flow 2.0, we can provide our customers with a robust design ecosystem."

Availability: Titan and FineSim are currently in production release. Customers may access the AMS Reference Flow 2.0 at the TSMC Online customer design portal http://online.tsmc.com/online

Magma has also announced that Magma's Talus, Hydra, Tekton, QCP and Quartz DRC integrated circuit (IC) implementation and verification solutions have been qualified to support the TSMC Reference Flow 12.0. Through TSMC's Open Innovation Platform (OIP), Magma's product suite provides users with advanced features to address the challenges of 28-nanometer (nm) design.

"Magma and TSMC have already worked closely to support the design and manufacture of a number of 28-nm ICs for the industry's highest volume fabless companies," said Premal Buch, general manager of Magma's Design Implementation Business Unit. "With Talus, Hydra, Tekton, QCP and Quartz DRC, and Reference Flow 12.0, mutual customers can have a high level of confidence in their ability to successfully deliver differentiated ICs using Magma and TSMC solutions."

"Close collaboration with leading EDA vendors such as Magma is critical to delivering the 28-nm design ecosystem," said Suk Lee, director of Design Infrastructure Marketing at TSMC. "Our mutual customers' silicon successes highlight the effectiveness of TSMC's process technology and Talus, Hydra, Tekton and Quartz for ICs at 28 nm."

The details of the tools and process support as stated by the Magma:

28-nm Design Enablement: Magma's Talus RTL-to-GDSII IC Implementation system supports TSMC 28-nm design rules that have been enhanced in Reference Flow 12.0. Talus' support of Reference Flow 12.0 takes advantage of new power and performance features, providing customers with faster overall design closure and better performance and predictability. In addition, Magma's Quartz DRC and Quartz LVS physical verification tools support in-the-loop physical verification.

Improved Performance: At 28 nm and below it becomes increasingly complicated to capture the number of potential variations at all process corners. With Reference Flow 12.0, greater performance is achieved using multiple advanced stage-based on-chip variation (OCV) optimization and analysis tables instead of a single OCV value. This analysis technique is available in Tekton, Magma's standalone static timing analysis tool, and is also supported by Talus Vortex through its MX timing engine. This technique can reduce traditional OCV pessimism and improve performance by removing some of the punitive pessimism associated with traditional OCV modeling.

Reference Flow 12.0 additionally provides significant user margin control through add-on OCV that allows further modeling of voltage and temperature variation and cell-based constraint uncertainty, both of which are supported fully by Talus Vortex and Tekton.

To ensure optimal dummy fill after GDSII stream-out, Reference Flow 12.0 provides for timing criticality information to be passed through to latter stages of the flow, a technique also fully supported by Talus Vortex.

New Low-Power Features: TSMC supports both the Common Power Format (CPF) and Unified Power Format (UPF) in Reference Flow 12.0. Talus Power Pro, Magma's advanced low-power optimization technology, also supports both the CPF 1.1 and UPF 2.0 power intent standards. This provides customers with complete flexibility in defining power intent. Talus Power Pro's industry-leading multiple voltage domain (MVdd) infrastructure delivers the most comprehensive power support combined with the simplest use model. In particular, its dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) low-power technologies, bolstered by an industry-leading multi-mode, multi-corner framework, enables customers to deliver the maximum performance per watt. These capabilities, combined with Magma's Hydra hierarchical design planner, allow customers to design very large, low-power systems on a chip without sacrificing performance.

To support Reference Flow 12.0, Talus Vortex also delivers optimized cell placement to minimize power hotspots and delivers native electromigration-safe clock placement and network topologies throughout the flow. Talus Vortex with Talus Power Pro now supports post-route multi-mode, multi-corner-aware leakage power optimization through Magma's Tekton timing analysis tool.

Magma Support for TSMC Reference Flow 12.0

Reference Flow 12.0 is supported by Magma's full RTL-to-GDSII suite of tools, which includes:

· Talus Design - physically aware RTL synthesis

· Talus Vortex - advanced timing and DFM-aware physical implementation

· Talus Power Pro - low-power optimization

· Hydra - hierarchical design planning

· Talus qDRC - timing-aware metal fill

· Quartz DRC - design rule checking

· Tekton - static timing analysis

· QCP - sign-off-quality extraction