Cadence Accelerates TSMC Reference Flow 8.0 for 45nm Design

Cadence is providing key capabilities to TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) Reference Flow 8.0. The new reference flow addresses design challenges at 45nm design, providing statistical timing analysis for automated DFM hot-spot fixing, intra-die variation and  new dynamic low-power design methodologies.

Eric Filseth, Cadence, stated:

TSMC and Cadence are continuing an established track record of innovation with our inclusion in Reference Flow 8.0…

TSMC's Reference Flow 8.0 is a complete, integrated and comprehensive solution for 45nm design. The breadth of offerings and easy-to-use flow are the key values that Cadence delivers to our mutual customers…

TSMC Reference Flow 8.0 allows designers to accelerate advanced 45nm design with lower power, faster cycle time, higher quality and lower manufacturing risk. The Cadence contribution within TSMC Reference Flow 8.0 is based on several new capabilities in the Cadence Encounter digital IC design platform and the Cadence Logic Design Team Solution.

Kuo Wu, TSMC, said:

We worked closely with Cadence to address the complex issues that face designers at 45nm…

Through our ongoing collaboration with Cadence, we're able to provide designers with new power management, variation-aware analysis, and design for manufacturing technologies, all tightly integrated into TSMC Reference Flow 8.0 and targeted to TSMC's 45nm process…

The new capabilities are supported by a broad range of Cadence tools, including Incisive Design Team Simulator, Incisive Enterprise Simulator and the Cadence SoC Encounter GXL? RTL-to-GDS system which incorporates:

• Encounter RTL Compiler
• Encounter Conformal technologies
• Cadence Encounter Test
• Cadence Encounter Timing System
• Cadence NanoRoute nanometer router
• Cadence VoltageStorm power analysis
• Cadence Chip Optimizer
• Cadence CMP Predictor
• Cadence QRC extraction

Reference Flow 8.0 delivers an RTL-to-GDS design flow that accelerates time to volume for high-performance and low-power designs. The flow delivers a comprehensive methodology to address complex design issues at 45nm by providing advanced design techniques to manage power consumption, addressing tighter manufacturing parameters, tackling an exponential increase in power leakage, and meeting new extraction requirements to accurately predict the silicon behavior of an IC's interconnect.

These capabilities, described in the order of RTL-to-GDS, include support for the Si2 Common Power Format (CPF)-compliant low-power flow covering design, verification, implementation and analysis. The low-power flow enables new leakage-power reduction strategies such as Power Shut Off (PSO), which requires not only synthesis and physical design support, but also functional and implementation verification capabilities that are unique to the Cadence Logic Design Team Solution. Enhanced support for the new 45nm routing rules and yield-optimized routing are part of the key solutions for 45nm process technology.

In the analysis category, process-variation extractions, thermal analysis and thermal-aware leakage analysis address new dimensions of design careabouts. Cadence advanced variation-aware analysis tools for next-phase SSTA capabilities, which now also include statistical leakage analysis and optimization, improve the awareness of manufacturing effects.

To further improve design yield, TSMC Reference Flow 8.0 helps prevent, detect and correct for yield limiters, as well as improve process windows and manage variations. The Cadence Chip Optimizer, together with Encounter NanoRoute provides defect-based yield optimization, including thickness variability prediction capabilities from Cadence CMP Predictor for model-based intelligent metal fill and CMP hotspot detection/correction. The CMP Predictor can be used with Cadence QRC Extraction to account for thickness variations in extraction and timing analysis with Encounter Timing System. Additionally, the reference flow provides for lithography-aware routing and an interface to third-party lithography analysis tools for lithography hot-spot detection and automated hot-spot correction with the Cadence SoC Encounter system.

Finally, the 45nm-aware design for test (DFT) features, such as power-aware ATPG, XOR compression and at-speed diagnostic completes the Cadence solution highlights. This reference flow supports designs targeting TSMC's 45nm process technologies.

As a supporting element to TSMC Reference Flow 8.0, Cadence also provides entire CPF compliance 45nm low-power tutorials and test cases, covering simulation, design, implementation and analysis, based on the TSMC reference flow. Customers can use these tutorials and test cases to observe the complete flow in action using an actual design.

Further reading  Cadence Accelerates TSMC 45nm Reference Flow