GLOBALFOUNDRIES today introduced the first 28nm silicon-validated
signoff-ready digital design flows to help chip designers deliver the
next generation of power-sensitive mobile and consumer electronic
devices.
Developed in collaboration with EDA/IP leaders and based on
GLOBALFOUNDRIES' 28nm Super Low Power (SLP) technology with Gate
First High-k Metal Gate (HKMG), the flows are tuned to help overcome
the challenges of designing and manufacturing integrated circuits at
leading edge nodes.
The new signoff-ready flows were developed with recognition of the
need for silicon validation to ensure first-time-right silicon
success. GLOBALFOUNDRIES claims that it is ready to offer its
customers the industry's most advanced set of synthesis, place and
route, sign-off, and DFM tools, tool scripts, and methodologies,
allowing them to produce signoff ready 28nm designs.
"Many of the world's top IC designers are using our 28nm technology
to deliver tomorrow's most innovative mobile and consumer devices,"
said Mojy Chian, senior vice president of design enablement at
GLOBALFOUNDRIES. "By collaborating closely with our partners in the
EDA/IP ecosystem to provide a comprehensive 28nm design platform, we
are giving customers confidence that their designs will be brought to
life smoothly and in time to meet their critical market
requirements."
Traditional foundry design flows have not taken into account the
interaction of design and manufacturing at advanced technology nodes.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES claims that ot has addressed these issues by
emphasizing early collaborative development with providers of EDA
software and IP to validate design methodologies against real
silicon. In addition to tight integration with GLOBALFOUNDRIES'
signoff physical verification solution, all flows leverage
GLOBALFOUNDRIES' advanced Design-for-Manufacturing (DFM), which is
supporting DRC+, the company's silicon-validated solution that goes
beyond standard Design Rule Checking (DRC) and uses two-dimensional
shape-based pattern-matching to enable up to a 100-fold speed
improvement in identifying complex manufacturing issues without
sacrificing accuracy.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Cadence have jointly developed a 28nm-SLP design
that demonstrates Cadence's portfolio of advanced silicon
implementation tools, including high-level synthesis, low power,
routing, DFM, and verification. The 9 mm2 multi-million gate design
is architected to highlight and showcase advanced 28nm chip
implementation techniques and to enable quantitative silicon
validation of power, performance, and area tradeoffs, as well as
robustness and yield. The design is being released to manufacturing
and is expected to be silicon validated in the first half of 2011.
The full design, implementation scripts, and a set of recommended
methodology white papers on 28nm routing and DFM will be available to
GLOBALFOUNDRIES 'customers starting in Q1 of 2011.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Synopsys have also collaborated to develop a
28nm-SLP design flow based on the Synopsys Galaxy Implementation
Platform, together with a 28nm-SLP Foundry-Ready System technology
plug-in for the Lynx Design System. The silicon-proven design flow
integrates the GLOBALFOUNDRIES 28nm-SLP design rules with Synopsys'
latest EDA technologies, including PrimeTime advanced on-chip
variation analysis, IC Compiler's DFM-optimized Zroute router and
In-Design physical verification, and IC Validator DRC and DRC+
pattern support. The Lynx Foundry-Ready System adapts Lynx's Galaxy
Platform-enabled production design flow to GLOBALFOUNDRIES'
technology and includes guidelines and tool settings based on the
latest 28nm silicon. The Lynx Foundry-Ready System addresses
recommended routing rules, on-chip-variation and advanced on-chip
variation analysis, and DFM, enabling a more efficient handoff with
the foundry. Both the foundry design flow and 28nm-SLP Lynx
Foundry-Ready System are expected to be available to
GLOBALFOUNDRIES'customers starting in Q1 of 2011.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Mentor Graphics are developing a complete
reference flow based on the Olympus-SoC and Calibre InRoute products.
The Olympus-SoC router has been qualified for GLOBALFOUNDRIES'
28nm-SLP technology, providing support for both advanced 28nm ground
rules and recommended rules to implement DFM, improved recipes for
efficient routing, and support for manufacturing scoring analysis
(MAS).
GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Magma have worked to develop a 28nm-SLP
signoff-ready flow based on the Talus Vortex IC implementation
platform. Talus Vortex is an ideal physical design environment for
engineers creating complex systems on a chip (SoCs) at all process
nodes and where performance and power management are crucial. It
improves productivity by allowing designers to implement up to 1.5
million cells or more per day on large designs or blocks - with
crosstalk avoidance, advanced on-chip variation (AOCV) and multi-mode
multi-corner analysis enabled. Talus also performs advanced low-power
design analysis and optimization via an automated multi-Vdd
methodology. Talus has already been used by Magma's and
GLOBALFOUNDRIES' mutual customers to meet aggressive time, power and
performance targets.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES is also jointly developing a 28nm-SLP signoff-ready
flow with Apache Design Solutions using RedHawk and Totem to provide
its customers with a low power solution. RedHawk is a production
proven power signoff platform for large scale SoCs including those
with ultra-low power design techniques. Totem offers power, noise,
and reliability sign-off for analog/mixed-signal designs. The suite
of Apache's products in the GLOBALFOUNDRIES' sign-off flow enables
designers to perform early prototyping, circuit optimization, and
full-chip sign-off.
A prerequisite in developing all of these advanced flows is rigorous
qualification of the digital routers. GLOBALFOUNDRIES has developed a
stringent set of requirements that digital routers from Cadence,
Synopsys, Mentor Graphics, and Magma must meet in order to be
qualified as signoff-ready. This includes meeting physical
verification signoff rules and recommended rules, run time and memory
footprints, as well as quality of results. The signoff-ready flows
and router qualifications are supported by a full suite of 28nm-SLP
Artisan advanced physical IP from ARM, including standard cells,
power management kit, memory compilers, and interface IP.
All of GLOBALFOUNDRIES' 28nm technologies employ the Gate First
approach to HKMG, which the company claims that it is "superior to
other foundry 28nm technologies in both scalability (performance,
power, die size, design compatibility) and manufacturability."