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Friday, May 31, 2013
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GLOBALFOUNDRIES Accelerates Adoption of 20nm-LPM and 14nm-XM FinFET Processes with New Design Flows
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GLOBALFOUNDRIES will unveil a set of certified design flows to support its most advanced manufacturing processes at next week's 50th Design Automation Conference (DAC) in Austin, Texas.
The flows, jointly developed with the EDA providers (Cadence Design Systems, Mentor Graphics and Synopsys), offer support for implementing designs in the company's 20nm low power process and its 14nm-XM FinFET process. The companies have developed the flows to address pressing design challenges, including support for analog/mixed signal (AMS) design, and advanced digital designs, both with demonstration of the impact of double patterning on the flow.
The GLOBALFOUNDRIES design flows work with its process design kits (PDKs) to provide real examples that demonstrate the entire flow. The user can download the design database, the PDK, detailed documentation and multi-vendor scripts to learn how to set up and use the GLOBALFOUNDRIES design flow. The flows use open source examples and provide the customer with working, executable and customizable flows.
"As the developer of the industry's first modular 14nm FinFET technology and one of the leaders at 20nm, we understand that enabling designs at these advanced process nodes requires innovative methodologies to address unprecedented challenges," said Andy Brotman, vice president of design infrastructure at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "By working with a new level of collaboration with EDA partners, we can provide enhanced insight into our manufacturing processes in order to fully leverage the capabilities of 20nm and 14nm manufacturing. This provides our mutual customers with the most efficient, productive and risk-reduced approach to achieving working silicon."
To address the requirements of analog/mixed signal (AMS) design at advanced processes, GLOBALFOUNDRIES has enhanced its design flows to provide production quality scripts and packaged methodologies. The new reference flow establishes a working flow from specification to physical verification that has been taped out to be verified on working silicon.
The AMS reference flow provides double pattern design guidelines. It gives overview of decomposition flow for both block level and chip level. The flow also addresses decomposition for different design styles. Recommendations for color balancing, hierarchical decomposition, ECO changes are discussed. The flows also present decomposition impact on DRC run time and resulted database size.
Notably, the reference flow includes support for efficiency and productivity improvements in the Cadence Virtuoso environment specifically for designing in a double patterned process. The flow includes support for Virtuoso Advanced Node 12.1 and provides access to the tool?s productivity benefits for physical design with real-time, color-aware layout. Circuit designers can assign "same net" constraints in the schematic, and the layout designers can meet these requirements as they create the physical view. Additionally, layout designers can take advantage of Virtuoso tool support for local interconnect, and advanced layout dependent effect management.
The flow also features interoperability with Mentor's Calibre nmDRC, nmLVS, and extraction products which address multipatterning requirements for both double and triple patterning. In addition special settings for analog design; auto-stitching and when to use it; and fill and color balancing are described in detail.
The AMS flow provides detailed information on parasitic extraction and layout dependent effects, both of which introduce new challenges at 20nm and 14nm. For parasitic extraction, the flows are described in detail and customizable scripts and examples demonstrate OA and DSPF back annotation. In addition the flows illustrate methodologies to predict layout-dependent effects during schematic design and methods to include full models in post layout extraction. PEX flows for Synopsys StarRC extraction, Cadence QRC and Mentor CalibrexRC are supported.
These flows serve as references to validate the correctness of the accompanying PDK as well as the vendor tools setup.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES is also making available new flows that support a complete RTL-to-GDSII design methodology for targeting its 20nm and 14nm manufacturing processes. The company worked with EDA vendors to certify the flows in their respective environments and provide a platform for optimized, technology-aware methodologies that take full advantage of the performance, power and area benefits of the processes.
The result is a set of fully executable flows containing all the scripts and template files required to develop an efficient methodology. The flows serve as a reference to validate the correctness of the accompanying PDK as well as the vendor tool setup. In addition the flows offer access to other critical and useful information, such as methodology tutorial papers; guidelines and methodologies for decomposition of double patterned layouts; PEX/STA methodology recommendations and scripts; and design guidelines and margin recommendations.
A critical aspect of manufacturing at this level is the use of double patterning, an increasingly necessary technique in the lithographic process at advanced nodes. Double patterning extends the ability to use current optical lithography systems and the GLOBALFOUNDRIES flows provide comprehensive double pattern design guidelines. They address design for double patterning and the added flow steps for different design styles and scenarios.
This includes support for odd cycle checking, a new type of DRC rule that must be met to allow for legal decomposition of the metals into two colors. This check is detailed in the flow and guidelines are provided to make sure it is met.
Synopsys and GLOBALFOUNDRIES worked together to minimize the impact of changes associated with the 3-D nature of FinFET devices as compared to planar transistors. The two companies focused on making FinFET adoption transparent to the design team. The collaboration on Synopsys' RTL to GDSII flow includes 3-D parasitic extraction with the Synopsys StarRC tool, SPICE modeling with the Synopsys HSPICE product, routing rules development with the Synopsys IC Compiler tool and static timing analysis with the Synopsys PrimeTime tool.
Cadence contributed a complete RTL-GDSII flow, including physical synthesis, and planning and routing developed with the Encounter Digital Implementation (EDI) System foundation flow. The implementation flow, using Cadence Encounter RTL Compiler and EDI System, supports double patterning and advanced 20- and 14-nm routing rules.
Mentor's Olympus-SoC place and route system is supported in the flow, providing support for new DRC, double patterning, and DFM rules. The Olympus-SoC router has its own native coloring engine along with verification and conflict resolution engines that detect and automatically fix double patterning violations. Expanded features include DP-aware pattern matching, coloring aware pin access, pre-coloring of critical nets, and DP aware placement. The Calibre InRoute product allows Olympus-SoC customers to natively invoke Calibre signoff engines during design for efficient and faster manufacturing closure.
Double patterning also impacts LVS and other DRC issues, and the flows provide methodology details to address these areas, including hierarchical decomposition to reduce data base explosion. Parasitic extraction methodologies and scripts are provided as well, offering ways to address double patterning-induced variations via DPT corners or with maskshift PEX features.
Design Flows for Multi-Die Integration Using 2.5D IC Technology
GLOBALFOUNDRIES is also offerign a set of certified design flows to support 2.5D IC product development with its advanced manufacturing processes. The sign-off ready flows, jointly developed with the EDA providers, offer support for implementing designs using multi-die packaging techniques, leveraging through-silicon vias (TSVs) in 2.5D silicon interposers and new bonding approaches.
Multi-vendor support is available, with full implementation flows from Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems. Physical verification with Mentor Graphics' suite of tools is included in the flow.
The GLOBALFOUNDRIES 2.5D technology addresses the challenges of multi-die integration with solutions for front-end steps such as via-middle TSV creation, and flexibility for the backend steps, like bonding/debonding, grinding, assembly, and metrology.
"Our 2.5D technology provides designers with a path to enable heterogeneous logic and logic/memory integration, offering increased performance and reduced power consumption, without the need for additional packages," said Andy Brotman, vice president of design infrastructure at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "These benefits can now be realized very efficiently with certified design flows that provide support for the additional steps and design rules involved in the design process. By working closely with our EDA partners, we can greatly reduce the development time and time-to-production using the most advanced multi-die approaches."
The flows allow designer to reliably address the additional requirements of 2.5D design, including top-level interposer design creation and floor planning, as well as the increased complexity of using TSVs, front-side and back-side bumps, and redistribution layer (RDL) routing. The flows support the need for additional verification steps brought on by 2.5D design rules.
The design flows work with GLOBALFOUNDRIES' process design kits (PDKs) to provide real examples that demonstrate the entire flow.
The flows come with a CPU core and memory IP and all the scripts and settings to execute a Synopsys Galaxy Implementation Platform-based flow or Cadence Encounter-based implementation flows with the GLOBALFOUNDRIES PDK. Similarly, the Mentor Calibre 3DSTACK tool is exercised in the flow to verify DRC, LVS and extraction within and between the various die stacks leveraging the same golden design kits as used inside of GLOBALFOUNDRIES. |
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