Monday, Oct 23th, 2000
CadMOS Design Technology And Prolific Inc. Team to Ensure Noise-Free Libraries
Companies to provide Library-ClinIC, a service that audits the noise immunity of standard cell libraries
San Jose, CA—Oct 23th, 2000 –CadMOS Design Technology, Inc. and Prolific Inc. today announced Library-ClinICtm, a new service for ensuring noise free libraries. Customers utilizing this service will discover which cells in their library are noise sensitive and will get advice on how to immunize these components against noise.
"As process geometries shrink to 0.18m and below, the environment in which standard cells are placed is becoming increasing hostile" stated Charlie Huang, chief executive officer at CadMOS. "Cells must be designed to be robust enough to withstand electrical effects such as glitch noise caused by crosstalk. Library-ClinIC will ensure noise free libraries by auditing each cell under typical and worst-case noise conditions, identifying potential problems and recommending how to fixe the problems before the library is deployed for production use.""Standard cells are the building blocks of integrated circuits and have a significant effect on all aspects of design — performance, power consumption, area and yield." said Dr. Paul de Dood, President of Prolific. "If you are going to address on-chip noise issues, standard cells are a logical place to start. The corrections for any sensitive nodes found by Library-ClinIC, can be captured in the generators used to create the library, for re-use when design requirements change or when creating derivative libraries. Our customers, many of whom are designing very high-speed libraries, are ideal candidates for this service. I’m happy that we are able to team with CadMOS to provide Library-ClinIC to them."
About Library-ClinIC
CadMOS' noise experts will perform library audits at either CadMOS' or the customers' facilities. The audit report will indicate which cells are the most noise sensitive and which noise sources cause the most damage. The report will also include advice on how to make sensitive cells noise immune.
Special Terms for Prolific's ProGenisis Customers
CadMOS is offering an introductory 25% discount to Prolific’s customers, for auditing libraries created by ProGenesistm."
When Noise Attacks
With each new advance in process technology there are some unwanted side effects, namely a dramatic increase in on-chip noise and a dramatic decrease in noise immunity. For these new technologies it is vital that each standard cell library component is able to suppress or attenuate noise and to operate as expected when noise attacks.
Noise can originate from the cell's external environment, such as glitches on cell inputs due to crosstalk from neighboring wires, glitches on internal nodes caused by crosstalk from over the cell routing or from IR drop on the cell's power supply. Noise can also be created internally due to sub-threshold leakage or charge sharing. It is necessary to ensure that for each cell in the library, external and internal noise sources are suppressed within the cell and that excessive noise does not appear at a cell's output. Excessive noise at any cell output can create problems for downstream circuitry causing functional, timing or reliability failures in the assembled design.
Availability, Pricing
The Library-ClinIC service is available now. Pricing is $30,000 for auditing a library of 500 cells or less and $50,000 for auditing a library with 1000 cells or less. Pricing for libraries larger than 1000 cells will be negotiated on a case by case basis. Each audit is performed at two process corners under customer defined environmental conditions.
About CadMOS Design Technology, Inc.
CadMOS was founded in August 1997 by CAD and design experts from IBM and Synopsys/EPIC and is funded by U.S. Venture Partners, Intel Capital, Allegro Capital and private investors. The company is privately held, and is headquartered in San Jose, CA. The company provides solutions and services to reduce the "silicon reality gap"tm created by existing design flows that ignore the true UDSM electrical effects such as noise. By closing this gap, CadMOS enables their customers to "accelerate design to silicon"tm. CadMOS sells its products directly in the US and through distributors worldwide. CadMOS is located at 111 North Market, Suite 440, San Jose, CA 95113, USA. Telephone: (408) 795-1212. Fax: (408) 795-1210. Email: info@cadmos.com. Website: http://www.cadmos.com
About Prolific
Founded in 1995, Prolific Inc. is the leading developer of EDA software that enables semiconductor companies to efficiently create standard cell libraries - without giving up custom design styles. Prolific's ProGenesis suite allows designers to create optimized standard-cell libraries using design-specific information contained in a SPICE netlist, process-specific information defined in design rules, and designer-specific options specified in the cell template. As a result, designers have the ability to quickly and accurately create standard cell libraries – building blocks of digital ICs. The Prolific Liquid Libraries™ integrates the creation of standard cell libraries into the mainstream EDA flow. This enables design-specific standard cells to be created on-the-fly during the synthesis/place & route phase of the EDA design flow. Prolific is headquartered in Newark, Calif., at 39899 Balentine Dr., Suite 380, Newark, CA 94560, telephone 510/252-0490, fax 510/252-0491. For more information, visit http://www.prolificinc.com .
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For more information, contact:
Jim McCanny, CadMOS Design Technology, 408-795-1212 x511 jim@cadmos.com
Pam Wasserman, Lee Public Relations, 650-363-0142 pam@leepr.com