Silicon Creations, a supplier of high-performance semi-custom analog and mixed-signal intellectual property (IP), and Silvaco, Inc., a leading supplier of Electronic Design Automation (EDA) software, today announced that Silvaco's Custom Design Flow has been successfully deployed for 10nm silicon node designs. Silicon Creations utilized a number of Silvaco's products, including Gateway schematic editor, Expert hierarchical IC layout editor, and SmartSpice analog circuit simulator.
Over the 8-year partnership between the companies, Silicon Creations successfully created multiple products using their design flow and Silvaco products. When it came time to design at the 10nm process node, they rapidly extended this flow to get the tapeout done on time -- even in the face of updates to the silicon design rules that arrived just a few weeks prior to tapeout. Silicon Creations' IP market requires they be among the first to adopt new silicon process nodes, necessitating the use of very early versions of the process design kits (PDKs). These evolve rapidly and hence require a flexible but automated flow and layout tools to adapt the design to PDK updates.
"As an IP provider, the ability to efficiently port designs to the latest advanced processes, and adapt to changing process requirements is essential," said Randy Caplan, principal and co-founder of Silicon Creations. "We took advantage of Silvaco's custom capabilities, including Expert's flexible scripting, that we optimized to quickly support our recent 10nm designs. We are continuing to push the next generation process technology with upcoming designs using Silvaco's products."
Silvaco Products used in Silicon Creations' 10nm design flow included:
Gateway -- a hierarchical schematic editor tool that provides a complete environment to allow designers to visualize and capture their design in the form of schematics
Expert -- a high-performance, hierarchical IC layout editor with full editing features, large capacity and fast layout viewing
SmartSpice -- a high performance simulator that delivers accuracy for complex, high precision analog and mixed-signal circuits
"10nm FinFET design rules significantly increase complexity and can create schedule challenges for teams," said Dave Dutton, CEO of Silvaco. "Therefore the on-time success of Silicon Creations' 10nm projects shows the power of selecting advanced and flexible custom design tools, including Silvaco's Expert layout editor that can be optimized for multiple process nodes and foundries. We look forward to continuing to support Silicon Creations in their IP development on current and future technology nodes."
Silicon Creations is a self-funded, leading silicon IP developer with offices in the US and Poland, and sales representation worldwide. The company provides world-class silicon intellectual property (IP) for precision and general-purpose timing (PLLs), oscillators, low-power, high-performance SerDes and high-speed differential I/Os for diverse applications including smart phones, wearables, consumer devices, processors, network devices, automotive, IoT, and medical devices. Silicon Creations' IP is proven and/or in high-volume mass production in process technologies up to the most advanced available in the industry.
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