CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
6 March 2006
Product News
Mentor Graphics Unveils New Calibre Litho-Friendly Design Product, Bringing Process Variability Data into the Design Flow
Mentor Graphics Corporation announced availability of the Calibre® LFDT (Litho-Friendly Design) product, signaling a major rethinking of the IC design creation flow, and expanding the design for manufacturing (DFM) solutions from Mentor. Calibre LFD is the first, production proven, electronic design automation (EDA) tool to address the urgent issue of how to manage process variability in the early stages of design creation. The announcement was made at the Design, Automation and Test Conference in Europe being held here this week.
Calibre LFD enables designers to make trade-off decisions on how to create a design that is more robust and less sensitive to the lithographic process window. This is important at the 90 nanometer technology node, and crucial at the 65 nanometer node, where process variations can greatly influence silicon results.
"The ability to deliver high yielding designs is critical in nanometer technology," said Luigi Capodieci, principal member of technical staff at Advanced Micro Devices. "By adding Calibre LFD to our existing flow, we can make layout modification trade-offs at the earliest stages of design creation, and dramatically improve layout robustness across the process window."
An LFD kit is provided to the designer by foundries and fabs, much in the same manner as a design rule checking (DRC) kit. The kit includes energy, dose and mask bias considerations, RET recipes, process models, and the parameterizable rules to be checked, all presented in a common results database. The designer can run simulations to see how a layout will print under a particular lithographic process window. The goal is to drive the design to an "LFD clean" as well as a "DRC clean" sign-off.
Calibre LFD also calculates a Design Variability Index, or DVIT, as a way to measure how resilient the design is to process variations; a lower DVI value represents a more resilient design. The DVI is used to compare different layout implementations and help designers select the one with the least sensitivity to variation.
Calibre LFD is built on the production-proven Calibre design-to-silicon platform, and can be easily launched within popular layout environments through Calibre InteractiveT. Calibre LFD plugs into a design flow much like an iterative design step, using the same layout editor used for the initial design. Designers can use a layout viewer/editor and a results viewing environment, such as Calibre RVET or Calibre DESIGNrevT, to view the check results and variability databases.
Capturing process variability to improve layout robustness is a major new step in DFM. With Calibre LFD, a foundation is being established for managing the impact of yield inhibitors with each new process node.
"In the past, it has been the responsibility of the foundry to ensure printability," said Joe Sawicki, vice president and general manager for the design-to-silicon division at Mentor Graphics. "Now for the first time, with Calibre LFD, designers can have a big impact on how well designs yield through the variances of the process window."
Pricing and Availability
Calibre LFD is available immediately. Pricing starts at $246K (one year term license). More information is available at www.mentor.com or by calling 800-547-3000.
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