15 March 2010
Software targets custom chip design
SpringSoft has introduced two products which address the increasing challenge of designing custom chips featuring analogue and digital circuitry.
The Laker Custom Row Placer and Laker Custom Digital Router are fully compatible with the Laker Custom Layout Automation System, allowing designers to work within a single custom ic environment to place and route both digital custom cells and standard cells.
"These tools build on the strong foundation of custom ic design technology in our Laker system and add efficient automation for the digital portions of designs," said Duncan McDonald, SpringSoft's director of product marketing for custom ic design solutions.
The Laker Custom Row Placer supports standard cell and custom cell design (including double height cell). It uses proprietary automation techniques to perform incremental selection and placement, as well as internal iterations to pack the placement area. It also uses stacking utilities for datapath-style placement. The row placer also assists routing with features for row snapping and overlap removal as well as diffusion sharing for area minimization.
The Laker Custom Digital Router is aimed at mixed signal designs with fewer than 50k digital cells. Not timing driven, routing is performed directly in the Laker database or in OpenAccess and is supported with LEF/DEF import and export capabilities. The initial release supports 40nm rules.
The hybrid router supports gridded and shape based routing, allowing off grid routing to reach off grid pins. Shape based routing allows design rule violations to be fixed.
Author
Graham Pitcher
Supporting Information
Websites
www.springsoft.com
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