The Cadence and TSMC R&D teams worked together to ensure the Virtuoso Schematic Editor and Layout Editor automatically migrate a source design on TSMC N5 and N4 process technologies to a new design on TSMC N3E process technology.
Early analogue design IP trials of the new migration flow found that design time on common analogue blocks was more than 2.5X faster compared with manual migration.
The Virtuoso Application Library Environment schematic migration solution, which is integrated into the Virtuoso design platform, automatically migrates a source schematic’s cells, parameters, pins and wiring from one process node to another technology. The target schematic is then tuned and optimised using the Virtuoso ADE Product Suite’s simulation environment and circuit optimisation technology to verify the new schematic meets all necessary measurement targets.
The Virtuoso Layout Suite supports the reuse of existing layouts on a given process technology to quickly recreate a migrated layout on a new process technology, using custom place and route automation. Using the Virtuoso Layout Suite templates, TSMC’s analogue-mapping technology and the routing technology in the Virtuoso design platform, designers are able to automatically recognise and extract groups of devices in an existing layout and apply templates to similar groups in the new layout.
“Through our continued collaboration with Cadence, we’re enabling our customers to improve productivity and accelerate design closure when performing node-to-node design migration of analogue blocks within the Virtuoso design platform,” said Dan Kochpatcharin, Head of Design Infrastructure Management Division at TSMC.
“Through the availability of our enhanced PDKs, we’re making it easy for our customers to easily migrate custom/analogue blocks from one of our widely used processes to another and benefit from the power, performance, and area improvements of our latest technologies.”
“By working closely with TSMC, our customers now have access to the most sophisticated migration and custom/analogue place and route automation capabilities within the Virtuoso design platform,” said Tom Beckley, senior vice president and general manager in the Custom IC, IC Packaging, PCB and System Analysis Group. “This new easy-to-use, node-to-node design migration technology addresses a key requirement for our customers’ most challenging custom analogue designs.”
