White Papers 

This whitepaper presents the key concepts of DPT compliant design and demonstrates how new signoff technology in IC Validator makes it possible to ensure 20nm manufacturing compliance. Recognizing that the designer productivity necessary cannot be achieved alone by point-tool enhancements and post-processing techniques, the paper outlines advances in In-Design physical verification within IC Compiler.
Paul Friedberg, CAE, Synopsys; Stelios Diamantidis, Product Marketing, Synopsys

It has come to be broadly accepted in the semiconductor industry that short-channel effects severely limit bulk planar transistor performance, and alternative device structures will necessarily have to be adopted if we are to shrink process geometries below 20nm. This paper explores the two major contenders for the new transistor architecture: finFETs and fully depleted silicon-on-insulator.
Ron Duncan, Applications Engineering Manager, Synopsys; Marc Swinnen, Product Marketing Manager, Synopsys

Synopsys’ unified solution for custom and cell-based design and verification provides a comprehensive, highly integrated suite of tools for advanced-node mixed-signal SoC design. The high degree of integration and interoperability shortens time-to-tapeout and improves design quality.
Synopsys

Multi-Source CTS delivers the ideal hybrid solution for designers seeking the best of conventional CTS and pure clock mesh. IC Compiler Multi-Source CTS provides better high-speed performance and OCV tolerance than conventional CTS and is more tolerant of complex floorplans and provides more flexibility for clock gating depth than pure clock mesh.
Harvey Toyama, Synopsys Implementation Group

The Galaxy Implementation Platform provides seamless integration between the IC Compiler physical implementation and Galaxy Custom Designer custom implementation solutions, accelerating the design development cycle by enabling quick and reliable custom edits to IC Compiler designs at any stage of development while maintaining design data integrity.
Synopsys

Physical verification challenges of analog designs are different than the challenges of large digital designs. In addition to complex runset requirements, a tight interface to a parasitic extraction tool and an easy-to-use GUI are needed to use a runset effectively in an analog design environment. IC Validator, the latest generation physical verification tool, can be used to solve these issues. This paper addresses many of the physical verification requirements of analog designers and how they are met with IC Validator.
Al Blais, Global Technology Services

Currently, most EDA tools do not provide a solution that addresses the limitations of a custom datapath flow. This paper discusses datapath designs, benefits, limitations, and the use of an automated datapath design capability that allows both custom and ASIC designers to meet aggressive design objectives with ever-tighter project deadlines.
Jafar Safdar, Synopsys Implementation Group

Resolving correlation issues is a time consuming step and is all the more challenging when it has to be done across multiple corners and modes. Tight correlation to signoff is critical for faster time to results. d d
Ashwini Mulgaonkar, Synopsys Implementation Group

With today’s increasingly complicated design flows, creating a snapshot of a design’s full mask set to run physical verification at intermediate points during the design cycle, or in-design, presents many challenges. This paper presents an optimal approach to creating a working snapshot of a design’s complete mask data set for the purposes of in-design physical verification with IC Validator, Synopsys’ award-winning physical verification platform for advanced nodes.
Rich Santilli, Staff CAE

This paper addresses design exploration and planning in a hierarchical flow for larger SoCs and discusses techniques for achieving predictable design convergence without surprises.
Steve Kister, Technical Marketing Manager

This paper presents how in-design physical verification with IC Validator enables Automatic DRC Repair (ADR), a novel capability that makes it possible for designers to automatically detect, repair and revalidate signoff DRC violations with negligible physical or timing impact, all within IC Compiler.
Paul Friedberg, Staff CAE

There are numerous techniques to achieve a low-power design and several approaches to structuring the flow. As a starting point, high performance designs require a benchmark proven low-skew, low-insertion delay CTS solution. Correlation to industry standard sign-off engines for accuracy and minimum data format translations are required to achieve fast design closure. The optimal solution includes complete low power capability throughout the design flow. This paper addresses low power design issues and includes technologies and techniques to achieve high performance, low power design goals.
Harvey Toyama, Synopsys Implementation Group

Timing, area, power, and signal integrity have traditionally been the primary objectives of design technology, and the primary care-abouts for designers and CAD engineers. Increasingly manufacturability and yield have also become critical design objectives, and multiple design-for-manufacturability (DFM) optimization techniques have been added to the design flows. As manufacturability has been a secondary goal, conventional routers have been optimizing for it after timing optimization – the point at which all of the primary design goals have already been met. While this methodology has worked well up to the 65nm technology node, it starts to break down at 45nm and below. This paper talks about the routing challenges at 45nm and below and the need for modern DFM-friendly routing technologies for achieving better manufacturability and higher yield without sacrificing performance.
Maria Gkatziani, Synopsys Implementation Group

There is a growing need for a concurrent physical design and physical verification flow, also known as an in-design physical verification flow. This flow improves the overall turnaround time and ease of use of the physical verification process. This paper provides a production-proven example of this flow.
Elango Velayutham

Achieving correct-by-construction results during implementation significantly reduces time to tapeout and avoids schedule delays. This paper presents a pushbutton flow to generate timing-aware, signoff quality metal fill during place and route.
David Pemberton-Smith

By its very nature, even the best conventional clock tree synthesis leaves both performance and variation tolerance potential on the table. Clock mesh offers the designer a means of achieving extreme high performance along with the avoidance of process variation effects. Long known as the clock distribution method for high-end microprocessors, clock mesh also offers significant variation tolerance. Clock mesh use to be an entirely manual, difficult to analyze technology, but new advances in clock mesh automation and analysis now enable it to be considered as a mainstream clock distribution solution.
Harvey Toyama, Synopsys Implementation Group