CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
4 April 2005
Product News
Magma Revolutionizes EDA Industry with ''Signoff in the Loop'' Technology Ecosystem for IC Design
Magma® Design Automation Inc. announced the availability of the electronic design automation industry's first "Signoff in the Loop"T flow for reduction in integrated circuit turnaround time. Magma's Quartz RCT , Quartz TimeT and Blast Fusion® QT expand Blast Fusion into a self-contained IC design signoff system for timing and noise signoff. Developed to address customers' needs for faster design flows at advanced geometries of 90 and 65 nanometers, Magma's "Signoff in the Loop" eliminates external signoff iterations and delivers correct-by-construction results, reducing signoff to a mere checklist activity.
"We have used the Magma flow successfully on many tapeout designs to identify and correct signal integrity and OCV problems and are very pleased that Magma is incorporating more advanced capabilities to analyze and optimize the design for OCV at multiple corners and for multiple modes," said Dr. Satya Gupta, vice president of Engineering at Open-Silicon. "We strongly believe that these features are required for advanced designs and the integration of these capabilities within the implementation flow will allow us to identify and fix problems faster and more efficiently."
Design teams have traditionally relied upon one set of tools for implementation and another set for signoff analysis. While this separation enables an advantageous tradeoff with respect to accuracy versus runtime, it also requires corrective iteration loops when discrepancies are found during signoff analysis. With the increased analysis challenges posed for analysis tools by 90- and 65-nanometer processes, such as combining noise analysis with on-chip variation (OCV) across ever-increasing process corners and operating modes, the use of separate point signoff tools becomes a primary bottleneck in the drive to improve design cycle time. Magma's "Signoff in the Loop" flow breaks the signoff iteration bottleneck by making signoff-level analysis directly available during the implementation flow.
"We are gratified by the response from customers who are replacing their current extraction and timing point tools with Magma's integrated 'signoff in the loop' technology for their production ASIC flows," said Suk Lee, general manager of Magma's Silicon Signoff Business Unit. "Initial results demonstrate that IC designers can improve turnaround time by four weeks or more over existing EDA products."
Magma's signoff-quality analysis tools for extraction, timing and noise integrate with, and complement, Magma's RTL-to-GDSII flow using Blast Fusion. "Signoff in the Loop" offers ASIC designers flexibility by providing an ecosystem of products that can be deployed either as standalone tools for ASIC customer validation, or with extraction, timing and noise capabilities that are integrated into Magma's RTL-to-GDSII flow.
Magma's "Signoff in the Loop" ecosystem consists of three products: Quartz RC, Quartz Time and Blast Fusion QT. Quartz RC is a full-chip signoff extraction product that operates in both integrated and standalone modes. Quartz Time is a standalone timing plus noise signoff analysis product that shares its timing engine with Blast Fusion QT and its noise engine with Blast Noise. Blast Fusion QT is the integrated timing signoff and advanced timing optimization product, and is available as an option to Blast Fusion customers. Magma's Blast Noise® provides Blast Fusion with noise analysis and optimization capabilities.
Quartz RC-Full-Chip Signoff Extraction
Quartz RC is a signoff-quality parasitic extraction product that delivers accuracy closely correlated to the acknowledged industry gold standard for parasitic extraction, QuickCap® . Quartz RC is a full-chip extractor that can be accessed within the Blast Fusion flow or can be used as a standalone system by ASIC designers via industry-standard LEF/DEF (Library Exchange Format/Design Exchange Format) input.
Quartz RC uses a powerful and efficient shape-based geometry processing engine to achieve signoff accuracy within 5 percent of QuickCap. To support more accurate noise analysis, Quartz RC also implements a highly accurate aggressor-detection algorithm. Quartz RC uniquely leverages Magma's QuickCap technology by using QuickRulesT for accurate and easy-to-use 3D cap rule generation and QuickCap CNE (Critical Net Extraction) for even greater accuracy on selected timing critical nets. Magma's Quartz RC is the only signoff-quality parasitic extraction product with multi-threading and distributed processing, that delivers up to 30 percent performance gain; and simultaneous multi-corner extraction that provides up to 80 percent performance enhancement and efficient incremental extraction.
Quartz Time-Advanced Timing Signoff and Noise Analysis
Magma's Quartz Time provides timing plus noise analysis accuracy and features required for signoff. Quartz Time was designed to address the complex timing problems that 90-nanometer and more advanced processes create for IC designers. Quartz Time offers a unique multi-mode and multi-corner analysis capability and offers advanced timing capabilities, such as enhanced current source model (ECSM) support, as well as support for multi-voltage design and timing impact of voltage-drop-induced delay. By sharing its analysis engine with Blast Fusion QT and Blast Noise, Quartz Time complements perfectly the built-in signoff system of Blast Fusion QT and extends support to ASIC designers' independent signoff verification flows.
Blast Fusion QT-Integrated Timing Signoff and Advanced Timing Optimization
Magma's Blast Fusion QT integrates the signoff-quality timing analysis technology of Quartz Time into the Blast Fusion flow, and provides advanced timing optimization capabilities to handle the effect of both global and localized on-chip-variation, as well as the effect of multiple operating corners and for multiple modes of operation. By integrating an advanced level of timing analysis during the implementation flow, Blast Fusion QT analyzes and fixes critical timing problems automatically within the flow. This allows designers to significantly reduce turnaround time while ensuring that timing is validated before handoff.
Availability
Magma's new "Signoff in the Loop" IC design ecosystem products, Quartz RC, Quartz Time and Blast Fusion QT, will be widely available in June 2005, either standalone or integrated with Magma's RTL-to-GDSII flow.
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