But regardless of their capabilities, point tools are not enough to overcome DFM challenges, according to Magma Design Automation Inc. The company Monday (July 17) rolled out a "DFM aware" design methodology that targets IC design at the 65-nanometer node.

DFM issues have caused yield head- aches at 90 and even 130 nm. But at 65 nm and beyond, effective DFM solutions are believed to be essential for achieving adequate yield.

"There is nothing new [with regard to DFM] at 65 nm," said Kam Kittrell, general manager of Magma's design implementation business unit. "It's just that the effects get more pronounced at 65 and beyond, and new techniques are needed to control them."

Magma's Characterization-to-Silicon DFM reference flow leverages both model- and rule-based approaches to model lithography and chemical-mechanical polishing effects. It is composed mostly of existing products, but does add three new Magma tools: SiliconSmart DFM, Talus DFM and Quartz DRC-Litho.

"There are a number of companies coming out with point tools," Kittrell said. "It's confusing for customers to create a DFM flow."

In April, Magma (Santa Clara, Calif.) rolled out Talus, a fully automated RTL-to-GDSII design suite that succeeds the company's flagship product, Blast Fusion. Likewise, the Talus DFM yield management tool succeeds the Blast Yield product. The new tool offers the same capabilities found in Blast Yield and adds a few others for coping with the effects of design variability and both systematic and parametric yield loss. According to Magma, Talus DFM enables foundry-accurate cell- and interconnect-level yield prediction and management.

Magma acquired the SiliconSmart characterization technology when it bought Silicon Metrics Corp. in 2003, and it has been marketing several SiliconSmart products. SiliconSmart DFM is a characterization environment for generating power and noise models for memories, standard cells and I/Os.

According to Magma, the tool is also variability-aware and can generate models for statistical timing and leakage analysis. SiliconSmart DFM supports the Characterization-to-Silicon DFM methodology's aim of creating "litho-friendly cells," and it provides compliance and lithography process checks all the way down in the cell environment, the company said.

Magma last year introduced Quartz DRC, which claims to verify any chip design in two hours or less. The new Quartz DRC-Litho is Magma's first commercial lithography simulator. According to Magma executives, through the company's collaborative work with foundries, the tool enables users to build the actual resolution enhancement technology recipes used by the various foundries into a simulation environment, providing an accurate prediction of final silicon shape.

Magma declined to provide more technical details about the new tools, saying more information would be forthcoming on each in coming weeks.

In addition to the new products, the Characterization-to-Silicon DFM methodology employs several existing Magma products, including Quick Cap NX for rules extraction, Quartz DRC for cell yield extraction, Talus LX for synthesis/design-for-test, Talus PX for physical design, Quartz SSTA for static statistical timing analysis, Quartz Rail for statistical power analysis and Quartz RC for parasitic extraction.

According to Dwayne Burek, a Magma product-marketing manager, one of the key benefits of the DFM flow is the inclusion of lithography process checks upstream from very early in the design process, as opposed to the back-end lithography process checks offered by traditional lithography simulation tools. He noted that finding potential lithography hotspots post-layout requires designers to loop back to implement changes, costing time and resources.

By running the checks early in the de- sign process, Magma's aim is to eliminate problems early, he said. "Integration of the technology within the whole flow is one of the key aspects of what we are doing."

The company's chief rivals, Cadence Design Systems Inc. and Synopsys Inc., have each touted various DFM technologies over the past year. But Kittrell believes Magma is the first EDA vendor to offer a comprehensive DFM methodology.

Each tool in the Characterization-to-Silicon DFM reference flow is priced and sold separately. Though the flow is said to provide a complete DFM solution, it does not preclude the incorporation of other point tools, Kittrell said. The company plans to demonstrate the flow and provide more details next week at the Design Automation Conference here.

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