Mentor Graphics Corp. today announced it is collaborating with GLOBALFOUNDRIES to qualify the Mentor® RTL to GDS platform, including the RealTime Designer™ physical RTL synthesis solution and Olympus-SoC™ place & route system, for the current version of the GLOBALFOUNDRIES® 22FDX™ platform reference flow. In addition, Mentor and GLOBALFOUNDRIES are working on the development of the Process Design Kit (PDK) for the 22FDX platform. The PDK includes support for the Mentor Calibre® platform, covering design rule checking (DRC), layout vs. schematic (LVS) and metal fill solutions for 22FDX. These solutions help mutual customers optimize their designs using the capability of 22FDX technology to manage the power, performance and leakage.
"We are collaborating closely with Mentor Graphics on enabling their products to help customers realize the benefits of the 22FDX platform," said Pankaj Mayor, vice president of Business Development for GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "The qualification of Mentor tools for implementation flows and design verification will help designers to achieve an optimal balance between power, performance and cost."
In design flows for advanced technologies, RealTime Designer™ addresses the need for higher capacity, faster runtimes, improved quality of results (QoR) and integrated floorplanning capabilities. For 22FDX in particular, it offers support for multi-VDD designs based on the Unified Power Format (UPF), multi-Vt optimization, leakage and dynamic power analysis and optimization, and a unique RTL-level floorplanning technology for improved QoR and runtimes. The Olympus-SoC™ tool comprehensively addresses the performance, capacity, time-to-market, power, and variability challenges encountered at advanced technologies. Support for 22FDX includes low power capabilities such as multi-VDD flow, concurrent multi-corner multi-mode timing and power optimization, forward and reverse bias handling, and DCAP cell insertion on power meshes for noise reduction.
"Our customers are designing some of the most complex chips for mobile, wireless, networking and graphics products," said Pravin Madhani, general manager of the IC Implementation Group at Mentor Graphics. "Our collaboration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES will enable us to deliver advanced digital implementation flows for the 22FDX platform for our mutual customers."
The Calibre nmDRC™, Calibre nmLVS™, and Calibre YieldEnhancer tools provide the verification functionality available in the 22FDX PDK. Core DRC and LVS verification are provided by the Calibre nmDRC and Calibre nmLVS tools, respectively. Calibre YieldEnhancer with SmartFill helps designers meet planarity and density requirements, and minimize post-fill timing changes, by intelligently and automatically filling designs with the optimum distribution and placement of fill shapes.
The next release of the 22FDX PDK will place GLOBALFOUNDRIES differentiated DFM capabilities into the hands of designers. The industry-leading DRC+, Manufacturing Analysis and Scoring (MAS), and Yield Enhancement Services™ (YES) design kit offerings from GLOBALFOUNDRIES, all based upon the Calibre platform, assist design teams in analyzing the manufacturability impact of their design styles with the 22FDX process technology. The DRC+ methodology uses fast pattern-matching capabilities in the Calibre Pattern Matching tool to identify lithographically problematic patterns, then uses Calibre nmDRC to enforce tighter design constraints where those patterns occur. The MAS and YES methodologies help reduce manufacturing variability: MAS employs the DFM Scoring functionality in Calibre YieldAnalyzer to score IP blocks and SoCs across all layers; in the YES service, GLOBALFOUNDRIES engineers use the layout modification capabilities in Calibre YieldEnhancer to modify edges and via placements to improve the robustness of the layout.
"By incorporating the most advanced Calibre analysis and verification capabilities into its 22FDX platform, GLOBALFOUNDRIES is giving designers the tools they need to build robustness into their products," said Joseph Sawicki, vice president, Design to Silicon Division at Mentor Graphics. "This not only ensures high-quality designs are delivered for fabrication, but also will help ensure faster ramps to production."
Mentor Graphics and GLOBALFOUNDRIES are working on supporting advanced extraction and reliability verification sign-off capabilities for Calibre xACT™ and Calibre PERC™ solutions.
